Activity

We take a package of Manner wafers from the case and throw it on the floor. The Seven Gables sells Manner wafers because they are European. “Oops!” we say. “Broken!” We put the cookies in the back room to eat later and get back to the business of scooping and selling.

But hush now, the previews …

All of these factors contributed to the subject’s sluttiness. But this study feels the most useful explanation, perhaps, is mythological. A mythology of sex itself. The subject infused the act of sex with unconscious mystical power. Why did she put that power into sex and nothing else? She wanted s…

At first it was boys the same age as the subject, or only a bit older. The boys were brainy classmates from her progressive prep school, with Guatemalan spreads on their beds and climbing gear stashed in their closets and calculus textbooks on their neat desks. By the time the girl was sixteen, tho…

Sexual activity was ongoing, occasionally fervent, but usually desultory or mechanical or dutiful.

North of the bookstore, a Santa Fe–looking stuccoed place to buy Birkenstocks and ponchos. A hangout for preppy bohemian girls, such as I was trying hard not to be. I wanted to be something more difficult, something other than what I was. I held a very deep misunderstanding about the world. I had t…