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my cheek. He answered, "By using the weight of free base DMT." "It's not free base. It's a salt."” 118 * CONCEPTION AND BIRTH "The university won't accept that. Would you fax a letter?" I asked. "T'll fax one tomorrow." November in the mountains of New Mexico is cold and dry, windy and harsh. I made many of these phone calls from my house in the Manzano Mountains southeast of Albuquerque. I sometimes joked to friends that my applications had to be approved because my view was nicer than anyone's in D.C. My former wife's weaving studio was in a separate building about fifteen yards from the main house. Hanging up the phone after that last conversation with Ms. M., I braced myself against the cold wind and slowly walked along the crunchy gravel path to the outbuilding to share the news. "They said I could start." I lay down on the cold cement floor, staring up at the ceiling. "That's great, dear," she replied, leaning down to ground level to kiss I called every day for the next ten days, asking for the fax. It arrived on November 15. At the bottom of the handwritten fax, Ms. M. wrote, "Have a Happy Thanksgiving!" That day, the university laboratory called to tell me the DMT in the glass vials had decomposed by 30 percent; it was too weak to use. I called the laboratory technician. "How did you calculate the concentration?" "Oh, I didn't know that. Hmm, let's see. That's right. It's the correct concentration after all. Sorry about that." Four days later, I gave Philip the first dose of DMT.