Chapter 16, Ships in the Night Summary and Analysis

In Chapter Sixteen, Xaviera explains her feeling that love and sex are completely separate activities through the story of her complicated relationship with her boyfriend Larry. Though she claims to love Larry, she constantly cheats on him and is fairly up-front about it. Regardless, Larry is jealous of this, but he stays with her in spite of her wandering. She stays with Larry only in order to have the constant, reassuring presence a boyfriend provides, and she acknowledges that she does not want to spend the rest of her life with him. She reassures him that the affairs she has with other men are like "ships passing in the night" (p. 267). She tries to engage Larry in swinging at a nudist camp but angers him when she breaks their promise not to climax...