This was not her line. It was the first line in Erica Jong’s smash hit 1973 novel, Fear of Flying. A writer in The New York Times said, forty years later, that “what most people remember [about the novel is] the provocative expression Ms. Jong invented to encapsulate Isadora Wing’s fantasy, the first word of which is ‘zipless,’ the second word of which cannot be printed, even today, in this newspaper.” I, however, can freely tell you the second word is “fuck.” Isadora Wing was searching for the Zipless Fuck. Sex pure and without trappings. I read this by-then yellowing book at the age of twelve in brief installments, sneaking into my mother’s chaotic room, thinking I was getting away with something, until she found me and asked, “Are you old enough to read that?” That was typical of her—asking a kid how it should be raised. One thing I particularly remember from before my parents’ divorce was, we were at a party at the Hendersons’ house on a school night, and my mother was in her cups. Suzanne could get sexy, disheveled, and sorry for herself of an evening. Later in life I came to loathe her drunken self, but when I was little, I just didn’t want my funny, cutely incompetent mom to vanish, replaced by this other person. On the night of the party, my bedtime had come and gone hours earlier. I got up off the coats where I had been napping and walked into a roar of laughter in the crowded living room. My father, remembering me, looked over at my mother and called out, “She should be in bed, Suzanne.” My mother glared at him for a fat second before countering, “Oh, I’ll drive her. You stay and have fun, Chazzy.” I was only nine years old, but I knew it was a bad idea for my mother to drive a car at that moment. I remember holding on to my father’s waist and looking up at him. I didn’t say she was drunk. It was obvious. I just said, “Please don’t let Mom drive me.” Dad was in the middle of a conversation and waved away my appeal.

It was winter in Kansas City. The moon was bright. I plodded down the Hendersons’ shoveled drive behind my mother, who was taking liberties with a beeline. She swung open the driver’s door of our car; I slipped onto the frigid backseat, where I figured I had a better chance of surviving a crash.