Simon Martin is coming up fast on his fiftieth birthday, and, he's a mess!

  Simon wakes up on a city street in the middle of the night after having been knocked unconscious while on yet another bender, his wallet and watch stolen.

  On his long walk back home, Simon tries to fit together the many loose strands of his past: his beginnings growing up with alcoholic parents in Florida; his admiration for his mentor, the clarinetist, William Cantor; his turn as a jazz player, making the San Francisco scene; his still painful feelings for his one true love; and his numerous slip-ups into a world of drugs and deceit.