On June 6, a U.S. Treasury note in my portfolio would mature and its value was $30,000. I had decided after Al’s death had ceased to engulf my mind and I had a chance to check out my retirement funds, to consolidate my assets, think about my likely life span, and face the fact that I did not care much about enriching any of my relatives. I had decided, after all, that I had no interest in increasing my equity and so would try to spend all my income and gradually reduce my capital. My goal was to spend my last penny as I drew my last breath—“a neat trick not easily managed,” my great friend in psychology, Stanley Milgram, had commented.

Roger Brown, Against My Better Judgment: An Intimate Memoir of an Eminent Gay Psychologist, New York, 1996, p. 173