THE RAIN AND THE RAZOR AND SATURDAY NIGHT
I was sitting in a cheap apartment in the mountains of North Carolina, in my erstwhile adoptive town of Boone. I was working on a roofing crew at the time, making very little money, living very strictly hand-to-mouth. I had quit graduate school, and I was stuck in the mountains, and it was late on a Saturday night and it was raining. And I remember thinking, gee, I must be tougher than I thought.