Second-Person Narration

Bright Lights, Big City (1984)
Jay McInerney

It's Six A.M. Do You Know Where You Are?

Your 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 a 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.