I achieved my vision in the summer of my 17th year, shortly before joining the Marines. Inspired by my deep filial love of Italian cuisine, I filled the old clawfoot bathub in my grandmother's house with fresh, high-grade gnocchi. I then undressed and tumbled in. The sensation was exquisite beyond description: clammy, gelid, but somehow greatly soothing. I submerged myself and immediately had a vivid impression of 300 Mediterranean women with dusky complexions and burly forearms. Busily their fingers flew, rolling, cutting, shaping the dough, the dough that was my flesh and substance, for I was one with the gnocchi.

I am not now one with anything.