This article: In the mid-1970s, Theresa Dunn, a young Irish-American school teacher in New York City, experiences her sexual awakening, while searching for excitement outside her ordered life. While in college, Theresa lives with her repressive Polish-Irish Catholic parents, and suffers from severe body image issues following a childhood surgery for scoliosis that left a large scar on her back. Theresa later finds out that her scoliosis is congenital, and that her aunt had the same condition and committed suicide. As a result, Theresa is reluctant to have children of her own. 
Meanwhile, her beautiful "perfect" older sister, Katherine, has left her husband and embarked on a wild lifestyle involving multiple affairs, a secret abortion, recreational drug use, and a short-lived marriage to a Jewish man. Theresa finds first love, and loses her virginity, to her much older, married college professor Martin. He ends their affair just before her graduation, leaving Theresa feeling used and lonely.
Theresa takes a job teaching deaf children, and proves to be a gifted and caring teacher. With Katherine's encouragement, she moves out of her parents' home and into an apartment in Katherine's building. She frequents a bar at night where she meets a charming but vain Italian-American character named Tony. She ends up sleeping with, and taking cocaine with Tony. He leaves in a hurry, and gives her a Quaalude pill to counteract the cocaine. This causes her to oversleep, and she arrives very late for work the next day, angering her employer and students. Tony then disappears for a long while, and Theresa misses him initially. contains an answer for the question: What is the first name of the person who takes cocaine with Tony?, what is it ?


Theresa