Post Office

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Sex thrums throughout Post Office. During his second day as a substitute mail carrier, narrator Henry ("Hank") Chinaski has sex with a lonely woman along his route, and goes back a few more times before getting bored. He is shacked up with Betty at the time, but this does not slow him. He flirts with loose female neighbors until Betty throws him out. Henry bounces back, marrying a rich, sex-crazed Texas nymph who nearly eats him alive and gets turned on when potted geraniums fall on him from as the bed shakes. After knocking off a good one for old time's sake, Joyce moves on to a "real gentleman" at work and Henry hooks up again with Betty. When they go to bed, it is not the same. Betty drinks herself to death, and after her funeral, Henry meets and beds Vi, but is too drunk to perform and is told that women "do not like coming in second to a bottle." Back at the track, he picks up a flirtatious drunk, Mary Lou, and is nearly mugged by her lover. Henry's last fling in the novel is Fay, an older hippie with whom he conceives a baby, but who leaves him for a well-endowed trucker/painter. Henry passes on a black woman he has flirted with at a party, but asks if he can watch her and her white lover. They go to a nude floorshow where Henry enjoys squeezing and kissing the girl until money runs out.