Lust Summary

"Lust" is narrated from a first-person point of view by a reliable, unnamed narrator. The narrator is a teenaged girl. The primary timeline covers approximately 3 years of her life as she attends the coeducational religious Casey Academy, away from home. The narrator is 15 to 17 years old during the primary period of the story. She lives in a dormitory-style room, smokes tobacco and marijuana, drinks alcohol, uses birth-control pills from the age of 15 on, and has sex with boys.

The narrator relates having sexual relations with Leo, Roger, Bruce, Tim, Willie, Philip, Oliver, Johnny, Eben, Jamie, Andrew, Simon, Mack, Paul, and Eddie. The narrator also relates having a sexual encounter with a sixteenth boy whose name she does not know. The structure of the narrative strongly suggests there are other unnamed and unnoted lovers.

The narrator takes her first lover, Leo, within the first...