Summary

In “PMS,” the narrator wakes up wanting to cry. Miles suggests that she is “not someone a man could build a life with” (111). She feels as if she does not understand herself. She wonders if her upset is her femininity threatening “to drown [her]” (113). That night, she dreams that her breasts are hoofs.

The narrator meets up with Marissa, an actress she once “wrote a profile about” (114). Marissa tells the narrator she and her husband are getting divorced because she has spent her entire marriage in love with an Italian man. When she contacted the Italian man, however, he told her it was too late (114).

The narrator considers what Marissa said about men enjoying coming “in their partners” (116, Heti’s italics). The narrator recalls when she got an IUD. It made her feel “plugged up and sad” (116). She had it removed shortly thereafter...