Playworld

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of substance use, bullying, sexual harassment, child abuse, and child sexual abuse.

Griffin spends Friday night at his friend Tanner Potts’s Upper East Side apartment. While cooking dinner, Mr. Potts watches the news, following reports of “the Iran hostage crisis” (123). Meanwhile, Mrs. Potts drinks a margarita and splints Tanner’s dislocated finger. Over dinner, Mr. Potts tells a story from his time in the Vietnam War that unnerves and confuses Griffin.

Afterward, Griffin and Tanner watch television and do push-ups, and then they sneak rum from the kitchen and go to bed in Tanner’s room. Griffin can’t sleep, thinking about Naomi. He wakes up late the next morning and races to his meeting with Kepplemen, who abuses him again. When he returns home afterward, Shel is making French toast. That night, Griffin has dinner at Cliff’s before the boys attend a party at wrestling captain Roy Adler’s house, as his parents are out of town. 

Griffin wanders through the palatial townhouse alone before rejoining Deb, Cliff, and their friends. Then Simon arrives. Cliff, Tanner, and Roy bully Simon by forcing him to drink exorbitantly, dragging him out of the apartment, and putting him on an uptown A train.