Thanks!

I want to extend thanks to you guys for cautioning me about my old friend. I will be very, very careful, keep him at a distance, and offer only generative help--he has to do all of the work. I think he is perilously close to a completely wasted human being: I pray there is a spark left in him, but I don't know. I really don't.
This is hard for me, but as Dan Moran pointed out: I've seen this before. The people I grew up with are mostly dead. Life is easily wasted. And he betrayed a primary trust in life: the care of the young. Even worse, in my mind, the care of a young woman. Sex is so incredibly precious to me, and the thought that he violated the trust of a girl NICKI'S AGE makes me so murderously angry that I have to process my emotions with care. I wonder: is part of my wish to help a reaction to my own repulsion? Am I "not living up to" my own self-image in some way?
One thing I know is that I don't have energy, time, or resources to waste. And this is as close to a lost cause as I've seen in a long time. But what I won't, and can't do, is kick him off the bottom rung of the ladder. I'm sure I can find some compromise...

But again, thank you for caring.