The Abstinence Teacher. Tom Perrotta

“But you'll need a crowbar to get my fat ass into those shorts.”

      “The collar will suffice,” Randall assured him.

      As she often did in their company, Ruth wondered how much of this banter was serious and how much was manufactured for her entertainment. Either way, dinner with Randall and Gregory was a lot livelier than the occasional girls’ night out she shared with Donna DiNardo and Ellen Michaels, a longtime colleague who taught History Defying the Sex and the City stereotype of randy, uninhibited single gals dishing colorful secrets to their friends, the three women rarely spoke about anything but work and movies. Ruth and Donna made a special effort to steer clear of the problematic realms of sex and romance, lest they trigger one of Ellen's weepy, chardonnay-fueled tirades against her ex-husband, Marty, a lawyer who'd run off with a much younger colleague and started a new family, leaving her all alone in a big empty house, her kids grown up and gone, nothing but the goddam TV for company, probably for the rest of her life.

      Tonight, especially, Ruth was grateful to have such diverting companions. It had been a rough week, a sustained attack on her dignity and self-esteem. Here she was—a woman who had always prided herself on being a fighter—standing up day after day in her own classroom and, under the watchful eyes of her three “guest observers,” betraying everything she'd ever stood for as a teacher, the values on which she'd built her entire career. She'd done what she could to let the kids know she wasn't buying what she was selling—grimacing, talking in a robotic voice, stressing as often as she could that the curriculum didn't necessarily reflect her personal opinion—but it didn't matter much. She still felt dirty at the end of each class, unable to meet her students’ eyes as they filed out of the room.

      “Abstinence is perfectly reasonable in theory,” Gregory said. “It just doesn't work in practice. It's like dieting. You can go a day or two, maybe even a week. But eventually that pizza just smells too good.”

      “Just ask Father John,” Randall said.

      “Who's that?” asked Ruth.

      “The priest who molested him.” Randall looked at Gregory. “What were you, twelve?”

      “Thirteen,” said Gregory.

      “What?” Ruth was taken aback. “You guys are kidding, right?”

      Both men shook their heads.

      “Really?” she said. “By a priest?”

      “Finally.” Randall pumped his fist in mock triumph. “A story we haven't told her.”

      “Molested is too strong a word,” Gregory said. “I think it's more accurate to say it was consensual.”

      “Come on,” Randall protested. “Nothing's consensual when you're thirteen.”

      “Not technically,” Gregory conceded. “But I did enjoy it. And I certainly volunteered for more.”

      “That's putting it mildly,” said Randall.

      “Don't mind him,” Gregory told Ruth. “He's just jealous.”

      Ruth nodded, trying to look as nonjudgmental as possible. No woman she knew would have admitted to enjoying sexual advances from an authority figure at thirteen, but she had come to believe that certain things really were different for men.

      “He was a cute little altar boy,” Randall said. “The whole thing was such a tawdry cliché.”

      Ruth had no trouble believing this. Even at thirty-eight, with his apple-cheeked face and lank, sandy hair, Gregory still looked like a member of the Vienna Boys’ Choir, despite the weight he'd put on in the past couple of years. At thirteen, he must have been an angel.

      “Father John was a sweet, mixed-up man.” Gregory smiled wistfully at the memory. “He died of AIDS, but none of the parishioners would admit it. To this day, they still call it cancer.”

      “Thirteen's too young,” Randall insisted. “I agree with the abstinence people on that.”

      “Maybe,” said Gregory. “But the other kids had been calling me a fag since second grade.”

      “So?” Randall said. “What's that got to do with anything?”

      “I don't know.” Gregory looked thoughtful. “It was just kind of a relief to make it official.”

      “You were lonely, and he took advantage,” Randall said. “You should at least be able to see it for what it was.”

      “It happened to me,” Gregory snapped. “Not to you. So don't tell me what it was.”

      “I just don't think it's right,” Randall muttered.

      “I guess I wasn't as lucky as you.” There was an edge in Gregory's voice that Ruth hadn't heard before. “I didn't meet Mr. Perfect on the first day of college and have a storybook romance.”

      “Honey, I'm not criticizing. I'm just trying to make a point.” Randall turned to Ruth. “Don't you think thirteen's too young?”

      “Everybody's different,” Ruth said after a brief hesitation, reluctant to take sides in the dispute. “It's hard to generalize.”

      “That's too easy,” Randall shot back. “You're a mother. Do you want your daughters having sex at thirteen?”

      Ruth shrugged. “I hope they wait till they're in college. But a lot of people don't.”

      Gregory pounced. “Did you?”

      Ruth poked at her sag paneer for a moment before answering.

      “I had my first real boyfriend in college,” she said. “There were a couple of weird experiences in high school, but I didn't really know how to process them.”

      Randall and Gregory traded prurient looks, allies again.

      “Weird experiences,” said Randall. “Now you've got our attention.”

      “Come on.” Gregory made a coaxing motion with his hand. “Don't hold out on us.”

      “It was nothing,” Ruth insisted. “Just, you know, the standard groping.”

      “The standard groping's always been good enough for me,” Randall said.

      “As opposed to the substandard?” Gregory inquired.

      “Even that's better than nothing,” Randall said with a laugh. “Who wants another Kingfisher?”

      RUTH HAD trouble falling asleep. This was often the case when she'd had too much to drink, and she almost always had too much to drink when she hung out with Randall and Gregory. She'd gone to their house after the restaurant, ostensibly to watch a Margaret Cho video, but they'd gotten sidetracked. First they headed down to Gregory's basement studio to look at his latest work, an unusually large installation that placed several French Resistance Fighter GI Joes in a maze of soulless office cubicles, each doll staring at identical miniature computer screens displaying the smiling face of the late Pope John Paul II. Ruth was puzzled by the piece until Gregory explained that it was an allegory designed to illustrate the way that existentialism/atheism had lost ground to organized religion in recent years as a result of the widespread anxiety generated by the ever more intrusive presence of digital technology in our lives.

      “Wow.” Ruth was impressed. “You really packed a lot into it.” Gregory seemed pleased. “Art is all about compression.” “It took me three months to round up those action figures,” Randall said, reminding them of his own contribution to the project. He wagged a finger at Gregory. “From now on you're going to have to start working with Barbies.”

      “Yeah, right,” Gregory muttered, as if this quip had been intended seriously. “That'd be really original.”

      Randall smiled the way people do when they're hurt and trying not to show it, then herded them upstairs to try out a recipe for chocolate martinis that he'd cut out of last Sunday's paper.

      The