Not to contradict anything (this is wonderful in its tracing of the shifts of retrospection) but just to add some random data:
- a biological theory of attraction is that it’s about how people smell, which in turn is a signal of immune system compatibility.
- When I was in my twenties (I’m about your age) I had the impression some men were relating directly to my body and bypassing me. It seemed like a kind of reflex.
- Reading about Emma Goldman’s midlife passion, and others, matched my own experience of having the most intense erotic attraction of my life (which didn’t become an actual affair but was an obsession for several years) around age 40. (The timing might be about knowing oneself better and losing youthful inhibitions, and/or it might be a kind of biological last chance to get pregnant, or a last hurrah of youthful sexuality in a more capacious container of maturity.) The object of my lust was not conventionally attractive but if he just put his hand on the back of my denim jacket I felt it as hot bare skin on skin. Musing on this long after I wondered if maybe he wasn't just hyperthyroid,
Mine happened between my two marriages and was an addiction. Nothing like that ever happened to me before or since. I described it in my book when comparing to another that, if sex had been an Olympic event, he would have won a gold medal! Sorry for a bit of shock for any man reading this but every woman who owns one will understand - he was as reliable as my vibrator but in human form!
This post shows how writing about sex can be without any prurience whatsoever and yet still be so evocative to a reader. More writers should write about sex. It's a fundamental human activity, and of keen interest to most people.
My thirty nine year relationship with my wife started when I was 22, and before then I was a shy adolescent. So I really have only one self-fulfilling data point about the concordance between sexual attraction and sympathetic feelings, at least for me as an adult.
I appreciate writing about sex when it transcends the physical, as this piece does. Many people, some of them fine writers, don’t write well about sex, and bad sex scenes can attract public ridicule. There is even a contest for bad writing about sex. Can it be that some writers shy away because they fear they’re not up to the challenge?
I agree and below was my attempt to write about sex, which was less bold than Laurie's,, although I did quote a winner of the bad sex writing award. It makes me laugh everyone I read it.
What’s the word I am seaching for that explains how perfect it is that I should read this today? I had lunch with my best friend and we were discussing how to organize my next talk about my book. I went through the topics I felt were important and she wrote bullet points for me to use. After I was finished, she asked me why I didn’t mention men since I wrote so much about men in my book. I realized I had no desire to discuss men and she asked me why. I had to think about it, and then explain that as my childhood was so completely unconventional and totally out of my control, once I could make decisions about my life I thought it was important to live conventionally. Therefore, husband and children I married my first husband to marry a family. I loved his mother and she was the force that drew me towards him and his family. The marriage was a mistake, I had a child and let things go longer than was necessary because I didn’t want my son coming from a broken home. My second marriage, while I did love the man I married, I was more interested in providing a home and a father for my son. We had a good marriage although, sometime during those years, I realized I had created almost an entire life apart from my husband. He was a homebody and would’ve been very content to just spend all his time with me other than one lunch a week with a good male friend of his. The last 10 months of his life we were together 24/7 due to Covid and it was the best time of his life because he had me all to himself. he was so effusive in his love for me that I fell in love with him again, and those 10 months were very special. When he died, I felt I could finally live the life I was meant to live. Living alone in my own space - not having to think about anybody’s needs but my own. Planning travel based on where I want to go. Getting together with friends when I want to spend time with others. I know that sounds selfish and I guess maybe it is but at this stage of my life I’m comfortable in my own skin and enjoy my own company.
Story, not storage (thanks, Richard). And the accordion pleats, and writing about sex that feels real because it’s not about mouths and organs. Wonderful.
Thanks, love. Because we talk about craft the way we do, I will say that, to me, the challenge was turning a progression of thought into a dramatically narrative scene, as opposed to an essay about ideas. I know you understand what's involved . . . it's almost like a thought becomes a character. xxL
YES, the thought totally became a character! i could see the way it moved and circled back here and there. love this note so much too. i'm looking forward (hope hope hope) to completing novel 2 revision soon so i can pop back into your zooms. i want july and august to be lazy girl summer.
"a person my age, in her seventies, can see life as an accordion with pleats that expand and contract." Extremely well put. I've lately become enamored of the term, "second honeymoon," i.e., " a function of being with someone who makes me happy." Life can expand, and even contract, joyfully. I was 60 when I met my love. "there’s a tender and knowing component in attraction."
As for, "I am easily hurt": The minimal goal should be: Don't hurt Laurie, even if she'd get good material out of it.
Yesterday in your Zoom you spoke (mused) about reversals. It’s very interesting in the context of narrative and I think it keeps the reader involved/intrigued. Thanks Laurie
Good point about that, yes! It was a fun Zoom. I always wish there was more time for people to speak to each other. That happens in the workshops, but they are less often and confined to 8 people plus R and me! By the way, I've had a cancellation in the August 10 workshop, in case you are interested in joining. xxL
This was a very interesting read. As someone in her twenties, it makes me wonder how many shifts in perspective I'll go through as I age. Life is really such a privilege
I am an octogenarian who writes autofictional stories on paperbags about relationships and other things. Occasionally the sex gets explicit because my characters demand it. I have been in love three times and the sex has been great with two of the women whilst with the third a big disappointment. Having my vanity appealed to on six occasions (excluding the butcher’s wife) has resulted in great foreplay on every occasion, but the final act never a success and never repeated, except once. I need love to function.
I spent 12 years in the 1970s and 80s listening to women having to confront their unwanted pregnancies and preparing reports. The two groups that struck me the most were those who thought getting pregnant would secure the relationship they were in, when the outcome was the man ending it fast. The other group were women made pregnant by ex-partners, who they let in again in the hope of rekindling the relationship. For the men involved it was, almost without exception, an act of revenge.
I have been a champion of ‘protection and prevention’ when it comes to sex since the mid-1960s. What amazes is that in the 1960s those of us actively promoting sexual freedom as the first great personal liberty never expected that, six decades later, there would be more abortions and sexually transmitted diseases than ever!
For the record I love going down on a woman I love. Head first…🐰
I really love how your perspective changes, or reverses, but most of all I love that your husband of all these years is the person to whom you read an essay about your sexual thoughts and feelings.
Not to contradict anything (this is wonderful in its tracing of the shifts of retrospection) but just to add some random data:
- a biological theory of attraction is that it’s about how people smell, which in turn is a signal of immune system compatibility.
- When I was in my twenties (I’m about your age) I had the impression some men were relating directly to my body and bypassing me. It seemed like a kind of reflex.
- Reading about Emma Goldman’s midlife passion, and others, matched my own experience of having the most intense erotic attraction of my life (which didn’t become an actual affair but was an obsession for several years) around age 40. (The timing might be about knowing oneself better and losing youthful inhibitions, and/or it might be a kind of biological last chance to get pregnant, or a last hurrah of youthful sexuality in a more capacious container of maturity.) The object of my lust was not conventionally attractive but if he just put his hand on the back of my denim jacket I felt it as hot bare skin on skin. Musing on this long after I wondered if maybe he wasn't just hyperthyroid,
Mine happened between my two marriages and was an addiction. Nothing like that ever happened to me before or since. I described it in my book when comparing to another that, if sex had been an Olympic event, he would have won a gold medal! Sorry for a bit of shock for any man reading this but every woman who owns one will understand - he was as reliable as my vibrator but in human form!
This post shows how writing about sex can be without any prurience whatsoever and yet still be so evocative to a reader. More writers should write about sex. It's a fundamental human activity, and of keen interest to most people.
My thirty nine year relationship with my wife started when I was 22, and before then I was a shy adolescent. So I really have only one self-fulfilling data point about the concordance between sexual attraction and sympathetic feelings, at least for me as an adult.
I appreciate writing about sex when it transcends the physical, as this piece does. Many people, some of them fine writers, don’t write well about sex, and bad sex scenes can attract public ridicule. There is even a contest for bad writing about sex. Can it be that some writers shy away because they fear they’re not up to the challenge?
Rona,
I agree and below was my attempt to write about sex, which was less bold than Laurie's,, although I did quote a winner of the bad sex writing award. It makes me laugh everyone I read it.
https://robertsdavidn.substack.com/p/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-dont
What’s the word I am seaching for that explains how perfect it is that I should read this today? I had lunch with my best friend and we were discussing how to organize my next talk about my book. I went through the topics I felt were important and she wrote bullet points for me to use. After I was finished, she asked me why I didn’t mention men since I wrote so much about men in my book. I realized I had no desire to discuss men and she asked me why. I had to think about it, and then explain that as my childhood was so completely unconventional and totally out of my control, once I could make decisions about my life I thought it was important to live conventionally. Therefore, husband and children I married my first husband to marry a family. I loved his mother and she was the force that drew me towards him and his family. The marriage was a mistake, I had a child and let things go longer than was necessary because I didn’t want my son coming from a broken home. My second marriage, while I did love the man I married, I was more interested in providing a home and a father for my son. We had a good marriage although, sometime during those years, I realized I had created almost an entire life apart from my husband. He was a homebody and would’ve been very content to just spend all his time with me other than one lunch a week with a good male friend of his. The last 10 months of his life we were together 24/7 due to Covid and it was the best time of his life because he had me all to himself. he was so effusive in his love for me that I fell in love with him again, and those 10 months were very special. When he died, I felt I could finally live the life I was meant to live. Living alone in my own space - not having to think about anybody’s needs but my own. Planning travel based on where I want to go. Getting together with friends when I want to spend time with others. I know that sounds selfish and I guess maybe it is but at this stage of my life I’m comfortable in my own skin and enjoy my own company.
Story, not storage (thanks, Richard). And the accordion pleats, and writing about sex that feels real because it’s not about mouths and organs. Wonderful.
Thanks! It was great fun.
absolutely love this, laurie. you're the lapidary of memory and all its different facets. so much pleasure to read.
Thanks, love. Because we talk about craft the way we do, I will say that, to me, the challenge was turning a progression of thought into a dramatically narrative scene, as opposed to an essay about ideas. I know you understand what's involved . . . it's almost like a thought becomes a character. xxL
YES, the thought totally became a character! i could see the way it moved and circled back here and there. love this note so much too. i'm looking forward (hope hope hope) to completing novel 2 revision soon so i can pop back into your zooms. i want july and august to be lazy girl summer.
That would be so great, and we want to visit after the house renovations happen. xxL
i would love that!
"a person my age, in her seventies, can see life as an accordion with pleats that expand and contract." Extremely well put. I've lately become enamored of the term, "second honeymoon," i.e., " a function of being with someone who makes me happy." Life can expand, and even contract, joyfully. I was 60 when I met my love. "there’s a tender and knowing component in attraction."
As for, "I am easily hurt": The minimal goal should be: Don't hurt Laurie, even if she'd get good material out of it.
Such good advice to the world. Thanks Hal, good to feel you have my back. And are protecting the rest of the world from me. xxL
Look out, world...
Yesterday in your Zoom you spoke (mused) about reversals. It’s very interesting in the context of narrative and I think it keeps the reader involved/intrigued. Thanks Laurie
Good point about that, yes! It was a fun Zoom. I always wish there was more time for people to speak to each other. That happens in the workshops, but they are less often and confined to 8 people plus R and me! By the way, I've had a cancellation in the August 10 workshop, in case you are interested in joining. xxL
Reversals create the moment of esthetic arrest Joyce wrote about. It makes art instead of argument. Really enjoy your perspective.
Thanks, Dan.
This was a very interesting read. As someone in her twenties, it makes me wonder how many shifts in perspective I'll go through as I age. Life is really such a privilege
Yes!
I am an octogenarian who writes autofictional stories on paperbags about relationships and other things. Occasionally the sex gets explicit because my characters demand it. I have been in love three times and the sex has been great with two of the women whilst with the third a big disappointment. Having my vanity appealed to on six occasions (excluding the butcher’s wife) has resulted in great foreplay on every occasion, but the final act never a success and never repeated, except once. I need love to function.
I spent 12 years in the 1970s and 80s listening to women having to confront their unwanted pregnancies and preparing reports. The two groups that struck me the most were those who thought getting pregnant would secure the relationship they were in, when the outcome was the man ending it fast. The other group were women made pregnant by ex-partners, who they let in again in the hope of rekindling the relationship. For the men involved it was, almost without exception, an act of revenge.
I have been a champion of ‘protection and prevention’ when it comes to sex since the mid-1960s. What amazes is that in the 1960s those of us actively promoting sexual freedom as the first great personal liberty never expected that, six decades later, there would be more abortions and sexually transmitted diseases than ever!
For the record I love going down on a woman I love. Head first…🐰
Welcome to my stack!
I really love how your perspective changes, or reverses, but most of all I love that your husband of all these years is the person to whom you read an essay about your sexual thoughts and feelings.
He is the best, and we’re not married!
Love Richard’s quote and your wise perspectives.
Thank you!
Thanks! xxL
This is a bloody good one. And now I need to listen to 'The Seasons Reverse' by Gastr Del Sol
Thanks! xxL
Couldn't find that song, looked through their albums on TIDAL. Hmmm.
My mistake! It's The Seasons Reverse by Gastr Del Sol.
Thank you.
Got it. Thank you again. Laurie, you inspired me to put a bit of it up!