“I'd made water shoot out of the bathroom fixtures. I didn't understand how. But the toilets responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing.”

“I didn't understand how. But the toilets had responded to me. I had become one with the plumbing...”

“To keep my cat from drinking out of the toilet, I could close the toilet lid, I could close the bathroom door, or I could pull my straw out of the water and stop setting a bad example.”

“The chili I ate made for an explosive bathroom experience. I don't know how to put this delicately, but I missed the toilet entirely.”

“I had someone at the Houston police station shoot me with heroin so I could do a story about it. The experience was a special kind of hell. I came out understanding full well how one could be addicted to 'smack,' and quickly.”

“To the extent that I had come to understand that despair does not necessarily result in annihilation, that one can go on as usual in spite of it, I had become hardened. Was this what it means to be an adult, to live with ugly ambiguities? I didn't like it, but it made it easier to go on.”