"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning.  But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy.  You are at a nightclub talking to a girl with a shaved head.  The club is either Heartbreak or the Lizard Lounge.  All might come clear if you could just slip into the bathroom and do a little more Bolivian Marching Powder.  Then again, it might not.  A small voice inside you insists that this epidemic lack of clarity is the result of too much of that already.  The night has already turned on that imperceptible pivot where two A.M. changes to six A.M.   You know this moment has come and gone, but you are not yet willing to concede that you have crossed the line beyond which all is gratuitous damage and the palsy of unraveled nerve endings.  Somewhere back there you could have cut your losses, but you rode past that moment on a comet trail of white powder and now you are trying to hang on to the rush.  Your brain at this moment is composed of brigades of tiny Bolivian soldiers.   They are tired and muddy from their long march through the night.  There are holes in their boots and they are hungry.  They need to be fed.  They need the Bolivian Marching Powder."

Jay McInerney, Bright Lights, Big City.  N.Y.: Vintage: 1984.  Pp. 1-2.