Summary

The narrator had considered a biology career for a year in college. During that year, the story's present, she worked with monkeys cleaning a campus lab. One monkey spat when she came to see him because he had no teeth. Still, she thought it was hard to see the monkey. Sometimes the narrator and her girlfriend, Toni, slept together in a friend's house, but the narrator still thought of the monkey. Toni would call the narrator restless because she would toss and turn thinking about that monkey. When Toni confronted the narrator about her sleep, the narrator would perform oral sex on Toni to go away "in my mind" in order to make herself feel more "balanced" (82). Toni did not perceive sex the same way, wishing that her partner would be more present during sex.

Toni would visit the narrator in the lab when...