“He wondered if this, more than guilt, was what had been holding him back. It wasn't that he was punishing himself as much as it was that he didn't really want anything anymore. But was that true? Did he really not want anything? What did he want to do? What did he want, period?”

“He wondered...if the journey of a life with pain was simply finding more and more layers of acceptance, that at best the most constant tether would be that he would never really find the bottom, that the bottom had different levels, and that no matter how good he tried to be, sometimes he would sink into a hole.”

“Adam could imagine what he looked like: a debauched nerd.”

“What if his advisor found out? Would getting caught having public sex do something to his teaching assistantship? Would he still be able to get a job? Would getting felt up in a laundromat inadvertently lead to him living on the streets, starving and exposed, selling his body for sex, which meant he would contract a disease and die?”

“That's it, he rasped. Hump me. Are you a dog? Are you a dog in heat? You my dog? He slapped me again. Speak, puppy.”

“I can win anytime. Kevin's going to go back to Burbank and tell everybody in his cubicle how he won at the Golden Nugget. Sometimes the pot isn't the money.”

“Louisa raised an eyebrow. "Is he—how shall I put it delicately—a simple man?”