SOURCE: Yuzna, Susan. “Reading My Life Between the Lines.” The Washington Post (13 August 2000): B2.

In the following essay, Yuzna reflects on her relationship with Johnson and her role in the short story collection Jesus' Son.

How should you act when you meet yourself as a fictional character? What do you say? Do you embrace yourself warmly, or pretend you've never met?

Her name is Michelle. She's the girlfriend in the new movie based on Denis Johnson's short story collection Jesus' Son. I haven't met Michelle on the screen yet (the film hasn't opened in North Dakota, where I now live) and haven't made up my mind whether I want to, but I've met her in print.

The first time was in 1988, when I opened the New Yorker to find a story by Denis. He and I had been a couple at the time in which the story was...