I’m lying beside Carol in her big bed in her historic house in Old Town, Chicago. I’m convinced that Carol is one of Marge Simpson’s missing sisters. She’s flat on her back, chain-smoking, alternately offering me her thoughts on Legally Blonde, which we are watching, and telling me various sexual acts her boyfriend likes to perform on her. “But you know,” she says in a voice that suggests she had her first cigarette at age six, “I don’t need a man to have an orgasm.” She pauses. “I don’t need a vibrator either. I can just think about it and it happens. It’s a Scorpio thing.” more ›