AT forty, I’m finally in control of my sexuality. Now it’s time to market it. My next book will be a foray into today’s relationships between men and women, with a lot of descriptions of me having sex. I don’t intend to titillate my readers, but no doubt that will be unavoidable. As long as they don’t miss the point of the book: how my sex life defines the nineties.
ADULTERY’S a good subject for a long work. I remember the first time I cheated on my ex-husband, Derek. The whole way up to the hotel, I kept imagining Derek and how contorted with pain his face would be if he knew that I was hurrying to meet my lover, Kurt. That vision of Derek’s pained face hovered over Kurt and me the entire time, ruining my moments of ecstasy.
I felt so terrible that I went back into therapy. After a forty-five-minute session I emerged a new woman, who felt entitled to her own sexual needs.
So I didn’t feel bad for telling Derek that I’d bought all our groceries that week at Dean & DeLuca, when in fact I’d picked them up at the Red Apple.
“Iceberg lettuce?” Derek asked, when he looked in our refrigerator. “I didn’t think Dean & DeLuca stooped to iceberg lettuce.”
“This is organic baby field iceberg lettuce,” I said. Before, I’d always felt bad about lying to Derek. Now I knew better. It’s his problem if he thinks I tell him the truth.
I used the money I saved to book a suite for Kurt and me. Later that day, I was in bed with Kurt. For the first time I could see him without the spectre of Derek blocking his features. Had that ugly mole by his nose always been there? I decided to let myself think about my husband. I imagined Derek’s face racked with pain and anguish again. Seconds later I reached my climax.
My book will save my women readers the time I spent in therapy. They’ll realize they won’t need to get rid of their guilt but, rather, use it for their own pleasure.
BEFORE we were divorced I tried to renew my love-trust for Derek by going through his files to make certain he wasn’t cheating on me. I discovered a stack of magazine photographs he had secretly filed away. He had carefully clipped and saved pictures of Cindy Crawford, Rebecca De Mornay, and several Ferraris. There were even photos of women who were sloppy and overweight.
This was much worse than any affair. I had always suspected that he was subjecting me to his rigorous male standards of looks. I worked out and worked out, just trying to measure up to what I felt sure was his pickiness. To find out that he had no standards at all! What hurts most is that when I was married to him I tried to see him as the fairly presentable human being I thought he had it in him to become.
I’VE been thinking about whether or not to have a book-jacket photo. Naomi Wolf didn’t have one on The Beauty Myth, and it hasn’t kept her readers from knowing how good she looks. In fact, in an article called “Radical Heterosexuality,” in Ms., she wrote about how she can’t walk down city streets without hearing comments about her looks. I’m confident I endure many more degrading kissy sounds about my thighs than she does. I suppose these construction workers think I pump Nautilus and wear a miniskirt just to brighten up the years they spend repairing the same pothole on Sixth Avenue.
Also like Naomi, I find that my male companions are oblivious of this harassment. “Did you hear that?” I asked Thomas, a male. “That man just said, ‘What a babe!’ ”
“A babe?” Thomas said, his head swiveling. “Is there a babe around? Ow! You hit me!”
This is why I lift weights.
IN my book I will tell my sisters the real truth: You don’t have to love the man you’re having sex with. In fact, if you wait until you love a man to have sex with him, it may not happen very often, especially if you and he are married.
I need to spend several chapters detailing the erotic possibilities I have discovered in annoyance and frustration.
I STAY in bed while Hank, a holding-pattern relationship, adjusts the TV unit. “As long as you’re up,” I say, “could you go to the store and pick up some cookie-dough ice cream? I’ll let you have the ice-cream part after you pick out the cookie-dough pieces for me. By the way, I noticed that you’re out of condoms. I consider it my responsibility to pay for half of them and yours to pay for the other half and do the footwork. Just put what I owe on my tab.”
I have moved past Radical Heterosexuality to Radical Princessdom.
RICHARD (divorced for ten years and still needing his space) and I were lying on his bed. I had been encouraging him to acknowledge my existence after intercourse. It was retro, but it was working; Richard talked and talked. The only problem was that all he would talk about were his favorite passages from Camille Paglia.
I couldn’t take any more and went to the bathroom to give him a sign I was bored. He just talked louder. And then I spotted it—another woman’s nipple ring near his Interplak. How was I supposed to respond to this?
The next day I sent Richard a package with this note: “Enclosed you will find one pair of my panties. Was I thinking of you when I wore them, or somebody else?”
I will take my female readers beyond rewards and punishments to torture. It may not do much for relationships, but it will do a lot for women.
AS I do research for my book, I begin to understand what Madonna went through after the release of her “Justify My Love” video.
Howard and I were in my studio apartment. We had just come back from a book party where we had met and had discovered we have something important in common. We are both literate Manhattanites trying to find sexual satisfaction in an increasingly difficult world.
I gave him one of my famous ear licks. “Tell me to crawl across the floor.” I felt good about being submissive, because I was being submissive on my floor. I was in charge of my masochistic/submissive/movie-option desires, even if I was behind in my rent.
Howard looked suspicious, but he said the words: “Crawl across the floor.”
I got down on all fours. But he was still looking at me warily. “Now tell me to grovel,” I said.
“Okay—grovel,” he said, unconvincingly. I was glad he wasn’t my agent.
“No,” I said. It gave me a powerful feeling to refuse to obey my own commands.
Howard leaned against the Murphy bed. “I think I understand what’s going on between us,” he said. He was shaking. It’s my observation that men in New York City shake a lot. Some of them begin shaking if I simply mention that I’m forty. Sometimes I dream of moving to one of those cities they say are great for families. Of course, I’d probably just end up involved with a married man. “And, while I look forward to helping you achieve your sexual goals,” Howard went on, “I must say that in the current context I have reservations about my participation.” He brightened. “I have an idea,” he said. “I’ll be right back.”
He returned with a tape recorder and switched it on.
“Okay,” he said. “You state your name and I’ll state mine. I think it’s best if we both agree on the date and where we are, that we are both consenting adults, that we intend each other no harm, that the activities we are about to engage in are forms of mutually gratifying playacting, and …”
Twenty minutes later we had agreed that while my saying “No” would still mean “No,” it wouldn’t mean “No,” not really, not the way the word we designated, “Artichoke,” would mean “No.” And while “Artichoke” would mean “Serious no,” it wouldn’t mean quite as serious a “No” as “Serious artichoke.”
I could tell that Howard and I had relationship potential.
1992