conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me a description for a book titled My Friend Leonard about Paris, Controversial, Italian with the genre: Biographies & Memoirs, Arts & Literature.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Controversial writer the author's memoir recounts his relationship with his father, an Italian mobster who offers him employment and, in doing so, becomes a friend to his son for the fist time. Whether the author's story is entirely true or not, given the controversy surrounding his first memoir, A MILLION LITTLE PIECES, narrator Andy Paris offers a compelling reading. Paris steps into the author's shoes and relates the most intimate details of his life with seeming ease, and there is an underlying emotionality in his voice that makes it sound as if the author were relating the story himself. A richly textured performance. L.B. AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the first five paragraphs for this book.. End with the sentence ' She says there are always options, she'll weigh them when the time comes to weigh them.'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: My Friend Leonard
  I have been here for eighty-seven days. I live in Men's Module B, which is for violent and felonious offenders. There are thirty-two cells in my module, thirty-two inmates. At any given time, there are between five and seven deputies watching us. All of us wear blue and yellow striped jumpsuits and black, rubber-soled slippers that do not have laces. When we move between rooms we walk through barred doors and metal detectors. My cell is seven feet wide and ten feet long. The walls are cement and the floor is cement and the bed is cement, the bars iron, the toilet steel. The mattress on the bed is thin, the sheets covered with grit. There is a window in my cell, it is a small window that looks out onto a brick wall. The window is made of bulletproof glass and there are bars on both sides of it. It affords me the proper amount of State required sunlight. Sunlight does not help pass time, and the State is not required to provide me anything that helps pass time.
  My life is routine. I wake up early in the morning. I brush my teeth. I sit on the floor of the cell I do not go to breakfast. I stare at a gray cement wall. I keep my legs crossed my back straight my eyes forward. I take deep breaths in and out, in and out, and I try not to move. I sit for as long as I can I sit until everything hurts I sit until everything stops hurting I sit until I lose myself in the gray wall I sit until my mind becomes as blank as the gray wall. I sit and I stare and I breathe. I sit and I stare. I breathe. I stand in the middle of the afternoon. I use the toilet and I drink a glass of water and I smoke a cigarette. I leave my cell and I walk to the outdoor recreation area. If the weather holds, there are prisoners in the area playing basketball, lifting weights, smoking cigarettes, talking. I do not mingle with them. I walk along the perimeter of the wall until I can feel my legs again. I walk until my eyes and my mind regain some sort of focus. Until they bring me back to where I am and to what I am, which is an alcoholic and a drug addict and a criminal. If the weather is bad, the area is empty. I go outside despite the weather. I walk along the perimeter until I can feel and remember. I am what I am. I need to feel and remember.
  At six o'clock, I walk with Porterhouse to dinner, the only meal of the day that I eat. It is usually foul, disgusting, almost inedible. The meat is mush, the bread stale, potatoes like water, vegetables hard as rock. I eat it anyway. Porterhouse eats seconds and thirds and fourths, which, by long-standing arrangements, he takes from the trays of other prisoners. He offers to get food for me, but I decline. When I am finished eating, I sit and I listen to Porterhouse talk about his upcoming trial. Like every other man in here, regardless of what they might say, Porterhouse is guilty of the crimes that he has been accused of committing. He wants to go to trial because until he is convicted, he will stay here, at county jail, instead of doing his time in state prison. Jail is a much easier place to live than prison. There is less violence, there are more privileges, most of the prisoners know they are getting out within the next year, and most sooner than that, and they want to be left alone. Once they're gone, they don't want to come back. In prison, there are gangs, rapes, drugs, murder. Most of the prisoners are in for long stretches and will most likely never be free. If they are ever free, they will be more dangerous than they were before they were imprisoned. They could give two fucks about rehabilitation, they need to survive. To survive they need to replace their humanity with savagery. Porterhouse knows this, but wants to remain human for as long as he can. A guilty verdict is coming his way, but until it does, he will stay here, and he will remain a human being.
  I always call Lilly first. Lilly with long black hair and pale skin and blue eyes like deep, clean water. Lilly whose father deserted her and whose mother sold Lilly's body for drugs when she was thirteen. Lilly who became a crackhead and a pillpopper and hitchhiked across the country on her back so that she could escape her Mother. Lilly who has been raped and beaten and used and discarded. Lilly who is alone in the world except for me and a Grandmother who has terminal cancer. Lilly who is living in a halfway house in Chicago while she tries to stay clean and waits for me to be released from this place. Lilly who loves me. Lilly who loves me.
  I dial the number. I know she's sitting in a phone booth in the halfway house waiting for my call. My heart starts beating faster as it does whenever I see her or speak to her. She picks up on the third ring. She says hello sweet boy, I say hello sweet girl. She says I miss you and I say we'll see each other soon. She asks me how I am and I tell her that I'm good. She's upset that I'm here and I don't want her to worry, I always tell her things are good. I ask her how she is and her answers vary from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute. Sometimes she says she feels free, which is a feeling she has rarely felt but has always sought. She says she feels like she's getting better and healthier and can put her past behind her. Sometimes she says that she feels fine, that she is getting by and that is enough, that she's off drugs and has a roof over her head, she says she's fine. Sometimes she's depressed. She feels like her Grandmother is going to die and I am going to leave her and she is going to be alone in the world, which is something she says she cannot handle. She says there are always options, she'll weigh them when the time comes to weigh them.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: If what you see doesn't move you, make you smile, make you happy, make you feel something, then fuck it, don't buy it.
  I ask the woman how much she tells me, Leonard says no way, that's above-market and he gives her a number. She responds they go back and forth back and forth until they arrive at an agreeable price. They look at me I smile and say okay.
  I give the woman my credit card she says she prefers checks. I say I prefer credit cards she says okay she rings it up. I sign the slip. She asks me if I'd like it delivered, I say no I'll take it with me.
  I get out of the car, they pull away. I walk into my apartment. I don't have a hammer or a nail so I lean my Picasso against the wall near my bed. I laugh every time I see it.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Give me the last four paragraphs.. Start with the sentence 'He turns the key, steps on the pedal, we pull away'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: He turns the key, steps on the pedal, we pull away. We drive straight through the course. We drive down the middle of the fairways. We ignore the golfers who are surprised by us, who yell at us, who ask what we're doing. As we pull away I open the box, and as we drive we take turns reaching into the box and spreading the ashes. We put ash on every tee on every fairway on every green. We spread our friend Leonard across the perfect, beautiful green grass of the golf course that he spent his life dreaming of playing, just like one of the members. With each handful of ash we say this is for you, Leonard, and both of us have tears running down our faces the entire time. We spread Leonard's ashes, our friend Leonard's ashes, our magnificent friend Leonard's ashes.
  When we finish we pull the cart into the parking lot. We get out, we start walking down the drive that led us here. We leave Leonard's Mercedes in the parking lot, right where it belongs, right where it will stay until someone takes it away. We walk silently, for the first time in a long time we are both without some semblance of our friend. We have left him where he belongs, and where he will stay. When we reach the end of the drive, Snapper takes a phone out of his pocket, calls a taxi service. When he's finished with the call, we sit on the ground and wait. Neither of us speaks, we just sit and wait. Ten minutes later, two cabs arrive. We stand. Snapper looks at me, speaks.
  Tell her I said hi, and that I said you're not as bad as you seem, and that I think she should marry you.
  Snapper looks at me for a moment, nods, opens the door to one of the cabs, gets inside. It pulls away as I get into the other cab. The cabbie looks at me speaks.