The True Fictions in Frey's Memoirs

WASHINGTON -- I found Porterhouse in the back of a health-food joint in a rehabbed neighborhood with a sordid past. The trendy lettuce-and-sprouts place where we met was once a drug den. Close your eyes, forget about the yuppies tearing into salads and inhaling soy shakes, and you can almost hear the hiss of butane and smell the scent of crack, like bittersweet peppermint gasoline, drifting through the room. I hesitated before confronting him, a million little options swirling through my brain.

Sit.

Stay.

Leave.

No.

Porterhouse was knocking back smoothies with a bevy of beauties in a corner booth. He shooed them away when he saw me approach.

Porterhouse plays a brief, dramatic role in "My Friend Leonard," the popular sequel to James Frey's memoir, "A Million Little Pieces." Frey has lately taken some heat from reports that he'd made up portions of both books. Oprah Winfrey endorsed "A Million Little Pieces" as "gut-wrenching," "raw" and "real." Well, as Meat Loaf used to croon so convincingly, two out of three ain't bad.

The trouble began when a Web site called The Smoking Gun went looking for evidence of Frey's exploits. Their snoops had tried and failed to track down some of the people mentioned in Frey's writings, including Porterhouse.

I am here to assert that I found him. But like Frey, I have no notes or documents to prove I did. Also like Frey, I assure you that what I write here is true to my conversation with Porterhouse and my recollection of his recollections. Think of it as -- how did Frey put it? -- "a subjective retelling of events."

Frey wrote that Porterhouse beat him bloody during Frey's first jailhouse lunch. From that unlikely beginning an odd friendship allegedly formed and revolved around a passionate interest in books.

"Yeah, I clobbered him, but he had it coming," Porterhouse told me. "I'm an animal activist," he explained, "and a militant vegetarian. Something about the way he chewed his meat just made me lose it. It's tense in jail, man."

"Tell me more," I said.