“Think of it as foreplay.”

“Foreplay for me or for you?”

She asked that question as I picked up what I thought was an empty box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers off the floor, and a ribbed, plastic vibrator fell out.

“Medical instrument?” I asked, flicking the on-off switch, seeing the tip glow and feeling the plastic hum in my hand.

“Things were a little slow before I met you.”

“Glad to hear it.”

One real bonus to moving in was that Biff was put out by my presence. Whenever he was around, he was seized by an urge to plop down in the rocker across from where Glenna and I were sitting on the couch watching the tube. Then he would recount his latest conversation with a state legislator who, impressed by NYMSRAL’s evidence of the casualties caused by illegal abortions, had switched sides and now favored reforming the law.

“That’s great, Palmer,” Glenna would say, while I went to jack up the volume on the TV.

Chapter 8

THE DINNER WITH my folks came about because one evening, when I went to Brooklyn after staying in Spuyten Duyvil for a few days, my mother asked me what I’d been doing, and my father cracked, “Boy’s past puberty, Renée, what do you think he’s doing?”

His tone offended me. I was too proud of having a gorgeous, brainy girlfriend to dismiss her with a leer. Glenna was the first woman I’d been with who made me realize that sex was an expression of something other than a wish for a little exercise after a movie. And for me, young, directionless, and officially residing with my parents, my feelings for Glenna were a signpost to adulthood, to freedom.

I’d believed writing an article for the Long Island Press would help. But after my father read the NYMSRAL piece, he commented, “Interesting. What’d they pay you for it?” And when I answered twenty bucks, he frowned and said, “That’ll buy a fifth of Chivas, except you’ll have to borrow a glass to drink it.”

I thought, Fuck you, while Mom beamed with dependable maternal pride over my byline. Yet whenever I blew by the house to grab some clothes, she bugged me about my whereabouts. I didn’t want her disapproving of Glenna because she was letting me sleep with her. My mother had liked some of my other girlfriends, but who knew what she thought about my sex life. I had never lived with a girlfriend before, and thus she hadn’t been forced to consider it.

I suggested to my folks that they take us to dinner. My father was hepped up to try Zalman’s, a restaurant on the Lower East Side that had just received a four-star review in the Times.

That night, in bed with Glenna, I mentioned the dinner, and she was all for it. I asked her if we had to get there early so she could mull over the menu.

She started laughing. “Why? You think it’ll make a better impression on your parents if I appear to know how to order in a restaurant?”