eggers and toph begin living on their own in a dilapidated, untamed fashion. eggers struggles between moments of feeling that his approach to parenting is calculated and brilliantly designed to make toph well-adjusted, to worrying that his hands-off approach and commitment to personal projects will make toph maladjusted. eggers's own attempts to lead a normal life as a young adult often involve fairly ordinary encounters with women and alcohol, but are depicted by the author as somewhat surreal. due to his parents' death and his duty to take care of toph, he feels robbed of his youth, and this fuels his pursuit of sex and irresponsibility.