First used in Kurt Vonnegut's book, Breakfast of Champions , this phrase means roughly, "to take a leak .""Sometimes somebody would say in his presence, 'Excuse me, I have to take a leak.' This was a way of saying that the speaker intended to drain liquid wastes from his body through a valve in his lower abdomen.And Trout would reply waggishly, 'Where I come from, that means you're about to steal a mirror.'"