His embarrassment increases, she sees, as when he was six and sick and she would quiz him about his bowel movements. Or once when he was fourteen and she mentioned the stains on his bedsheets. But he wants to talk, she also sees, about these details, to show off the knowledge his manhood has obtained. He sighs in surrender and closes his eyes and says, “It’s hard to describe. You know that expression about drunks. ‘feeling no pain’? After a hit, I feel no pain. I guess that means I feel pain the rest of the time. Everything goes from black and white to color. Everything is more intense, and more hopeful. You see the world the way it was meant to be. You feel powerful.” This last confidence is so intimate the boy bats his eyelids, his lashes long as a girl’s, and blushes.

Janice feels slightly queasy, brought this close to something neutral and undecided in her son’s sexual nature – something scared out of him – and brings her legs up on the sofa under her, the short skirt hiking up above the knees. Her legs are still firm and trim at fifty-two, her best feature as a girl and woman, her hair having always been skimpy and her breasts small and her face nondescript. She especially loves her legs here in Florida, where they turn brown and compare favorably with those of the other women, who have let themselves get out of shape or never had a shape to start with. These Jewish women tend to have piano legs, and low hips. Letting her son enjoy her ignorance, Janice asks, “How many of these snorts do you need at a time, to feel the bright colors?”