Helen Memel, eighteen years old and laid up in the hospital after an intmate shaving accident, whiles away the hours plotting to reunite her long-divorced parents. She also has plenty of time to ruminate on her past sexual and physical adventures, and she does so in increasingly uncomfortable detail. The result is a funny, shocking, and fearless manifesto on sex, hygiene, and the compulsion to obliterate the covenant that keeps girls clean, quiet, and nice.