“About a minute before”: I interviewed a diverse group of over a hundred women. Interviews were conducted over e-mail, by phone, and in person.
With every flash: Suzanne Moore, “There Won’t Be Blood,” New Statesman, 2015.
“My feelings seemed”: Charles Finney, The Autobiography of Charles G. Finney: The Life Story of America’s Greatest Evangelist—in His Own Words (Bethany House Publishers, 2006).
get back there: Germaine Greer, The Change (Ballantine Books, 1993). While I consider Greer’s book to be the best feminist text on menopause, I do not agree with her negation of trans women. Trans women are women. Period.
permeated with alienation: Joseph F. Brown, “Hulk Smashed! The Rhetoric of Alcoholism in Television’s Incredible Hulk,” Journal of Popular Culture, 2011.
estrogen is not the only trigger: Naomi E. Rance, “Modulation of Body Temperature and LH Secretion by Hypothalamic KNDy Neurons: A Novel Hypothesis on the Mechanism of Hot Flushes,” Frontiers of Neuroendocrinology, 2013.
killer whales also go through menopause: Darren P. Croft and Emma A. Foster, “Ecological Knowledge, Leadership, and the Evolution of Menopause in Killer Whales,” Current Biology, 2015.
only survivor of the Puget Sound capture: Sandra Pollard, Puget Sound Whales for Sale: The Fight to End Orca Hunting (The History Press, 2014), p. 99.
archival footage: Wolfson Archives, Miami Dade College, Miami, Florida. Thanks to the archivist Lou Kramer.
“I desperately wanted”: Charles Foster, Being a Beast (Picador, 2016), page 10.
“Today I sometimes struggle”: Jaycee Dugard, A Stolen Life (Simon & Schuster, 2011), p. 22.
U.S. Department of Agriculture has finally acknowledged: Jonathan Kendall, “Lolita’s Miami Seaquarium Tank Doesn’t Meet Federal Standards,” Miami Times, March 21, 2016.
“Something is sent to”: Edward Tilt, The Change of Life in Health and Disease (Lindsay & Blakiston, 1857).
“animal birthday”: Ernest Becker, The Denial of Death (Simon & Schuster, 1973), p. 214.
“I think of my body”: Carmen Maria Machado, “Unruly, Adjective,” Medium, 2017.
They are skillful listeners: Phyllis Lee, “The Reproductive Advantages of a Long Life: Longevity and Senescence in Wild African Elephants,” Behavior Ecology and Sociobiology, 2016.
matriarchs also distinguish: Karen Mccomb, PNAS, 2014.
“A lot of people ask”: Sue W. Margulis and Sylvia Atsalis, “Sexual and Hormonal Cycles in Geriatric Gorilla gorilla gorilla,” International Journal of Primatology, 2006.
“There is every indication”: Georges Bataille, Theory of Religion (Zone Books, 1992), p. 35.
While examining a new fifty-one-year-old patient: Robert A. Wilson, Feminine Forever (Pocket Books, 1966) pp. 38–42.
Aristotle thought: Louise Foxcroft, Hot Flushes, Cold Science (Granta Books, 2009). Reading this helped me learn about the earliest history of menopause and how it was misunderstood.
brain is 25 percent different: Louann Brizendine, The Female Brain (Harmony Books, 2006), p. 3.
“I move this body around”: Samantha Irby, “Hysterical!,” Medium, 2017.
study in which: Julie A. Dumas, “Increased Working Memory–Related Brain Activity in Middle-Aged Women with Cognitive Complaints,” Neurobiology of Aging, 2012.
“We must conclude”: Sigmund Freud, Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, 1933.
“hot sexy number”: Virginie Despentes, King Kong Theory (Feminist Press, 2010), p. 8.
“It is fundamental not to”: Paul B. Preciado, Testo Junkie (Feminist Press, 2013), p. 397.
“jumping through a bunch of hoops”: Juliet Jacques, Trans: A Memoir (Verso, 2015), p. 294.
“an ungendering, an unraveling”: Julia Serano, Whipping Girl (Seal Press, 2007), p. 19.
“a unique intensive fire”: Max Wolf Valerio, The Testosterone Files (Seal Press, 2006), p. 9.
how uncomfortable the culture: Laura J. Petracek, The Anger Workbook for Women (New Harbinger, 2004), p. 2.
“If a patient was standing”: Rick Paulas, “The Neuroscience of Ghosts,” Pacific Standard, 2016.
often make better ghosts: Andi Zeisler, “The Feminist Power of Female Ghosts,” Bitch Media, 2017.
Bloody Mary: Alan Dundes, “Bloody Mary in the Mirror: A Ritual of Pre-Pubescent Anxiety,” Western Folk Lore 52, no. 2–3 (1998).
Women could be accused of witchcraft: These details were collected from a number of sources, among them The Penguin Book of Witches, edited by Katherine Howe; The Witches, by Stacy Schiff; The Witch, by Ronald Hutton; Witchcraft and the Limits of Interpretation, by David D. Hall; and The Devil in the Shape of a Woman, by Carol F. Karlsen.
One husband told a researcher: Sue Brayne, Sex, Meaning and the Menopause (Continuum, 2011), p. 103.
whatever-you-want-honey hormone: Julie Holland, Moody Bitches (Penguin Press, 2015), p. 39.
“First there was the shock”: Ann Mankowitz, Change of Life (Inner City Books, 1984), p. 36.
One woman, when she drew a blueprint: Wendy Maltz and Suzie Boss, Private Thoughts: Exploring the Power of Women’s Sexual Fantasies (New World Library, 2001), p. 187.
“yet the more we learn”: Lisa M. Diamond, Sexual Fluidity (Harvard University Press, 2008), p. 140.
“Apollo could not enter”: Elizabeth Abbott, The History of Celibacy (Da Capo Press, 1999), p. 37.
half dozen men: I interviewed men, asking them questions about their own aging bodies and their relationships with their menopausal wives.
seed buried inside: Barbara G. Walker, The Crone (Harper San Francisco, 1985), p. 29.
“Mama, Mama?”: Toni Morrison, Jazz (Vintage International, 1992), p. 110.
“What does one discover”: Elena Ferrante, Frantumaglia (Europa Editions, 2016), p. 219.
“That is the moment”: Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, Touching Feeling (Duke University Press, 2003), p. 36.
“is straightforwardly connected”: Bernard Williams, Shame and Necessity (University of California Press, 1993), p. 79.
“The vagina is valued”: Luce Irigaray, The Sex Which Is Not One (Cornell University Press, 1985), p. 23.
Even legally the vagina: Alan Hyde, “The Legal Vagina,” Bodies of Law (Princeton University Press, 1997).
“I was a body”: Roxane Gay, Hunger (HarperCollins, 2017), p. 10.
“Who is the real subject”: Anne Carson, Eros the Bittersweet (Dalkey Archive Press, 1998), p. 30.
“Our woman with an open pussy”: Francis Naumann, The Recurrent, Haunting Ghost: Essays on the Art, Life and Legacy of Marcel Duchamp (Ready Made Press, 2012).
“There was strength”: June Arnold, Sister Gin (Daughters Inc., 1975), p. 126.
“I’m not dead”: Kathy Acker, “In Memoriam to Identity,” by way of Douglas A. Martin’s terrific Acker (Nightboat Books, 2017), p. 222.
“Two seconds went by”: Erich Hoyt, Orca: The Whale Called Killer (Camden House, 1981), p. 54.
“There are so many females”: Alexander Morton, Listening to Whales (Ballantine Books, 2002), p. 139.
orca-gasm: Tema Milstein’s articles helped me understand the experience of whale watching and seeing a whale up close: “Transcorporeal Tourism: Whales, Fetuses and the Rupturing and Reinscribing of Cultural Constraints,” Environmental Communication, 2012; “When Whales Speak for Themselves: Communication as a Mediating Force in Wildlife Tourism,” Environmental Communication, 2008; and “The Performer Metaphor: Mother Nature Never Gives the Same Show Twice,” Environmental Communication, 2016.
“impossible”: Jean-Luc Marion, “The Death of the Death of God,” Reimagining the Sacred (Columbia University Press, 2016), p. 192.
expander of the grandmother hypothesis: K. Hawkes, J. F. O’Connell, and N. G. Blurton Jones, “Hardworking Hadza Grandmothers,” Comparative Socioecology, edited by V. Standen and R. A. Foley (Basil Blackwell, 1989); “Grandmothering, Menopause, and the Evolution of Human Life Histories,” Proceedings of the National Academy, 1998; “Grandmothers and the Evolution of Human Longevity: A Review of Findings and a Future Direction,” Evolutionary Anthropology, 2013.
In a book I read about the Valdez spill: Eva Saulitis, Into Great Silence (Beacon Press, 2013), p. 63.
“If feminism is anything”: Avital Ronell, Angry Women (RE/Search, 1991), p. 140.
“I am not free”: Audre Lorde, “Uses of Anger,” Sister Outsider (Crossing Press, 1984), p. 132.
“When we speak of the human animal’s”: David Abrams, Becoming Animal (Vintage Books, 2011), p. 277.
“The ideal state of human”: Wendy Doniger, The Lives of Animals (Princeton University Press, 2016), p. 100.