Amy, almost five and already a secretive and acquisitive creature, devoted herself to eating the discarded chewing gum she found all over the city. Well, not exactly eat. She was old enough to understand the basic principle of gum. She would swap gum in her mouth for other gum throughout the day.

Then, remembering how thin Dad had been, I suggested nutritional deficiencies had contributed to his rapid deterioration. My brother responded, no lie: "Yeah, probably. You can't really live on Cheez-Its and oatmeal." So here is the lesson: if you create a dope-addled son, whom you never fed properly when he was a child and who is going to inherit your largish estate, you had best not put that son in charge of your meals.

I remember how they looked at me when they made me move out of their house when I was fifteen; when they met my friends at my college graduation; when they were across the conference table from me at the legal deposition. Reflected in their eyes is what they saw-a rogue turd bolus, swirling around and around and refusing to go down. If it's true that I'm locked in a decades-long death match with these people, I'm the one who's going to win. One down, one to go.

I didn't see his penis as often as I did my mother's breasts, but I could pick it out of a lineup, no problem.