Summary

In "No More Than a Bubble," Claudius Van Clyde and the first person narrator, Ben, go to a party for singles thrown by Harvard grads "just weeks before the Day of Atonement, in late September of 1995" (4). The two Colombia sophomores meet Sybil and Naomie at the party. They admire the girls' bodies and try to dance with them, interrupting their conversations with other men, and following them up and down the stairs. Throughout the course of the party, the girls keep referring to everything as "bubble," a word they use as a noun, verb, and adjective (5).

A few weeks prior, the narrator spends a day getting drunk with his Italian father Leo. Alluding to the narrator's mother, Leo tells his son to "beware of crazy women," and gives him a condom to use just once with a passionate woman (7). At...