Laura Friedman Williams
It is past 2 a.m. on a cool spring night and I am in the PTA office at my kids’ elementary school. I am standing behind the desk, still zipped into the gauzy black dress I donned eight hours ago for the school auction, my feet now happily settled into flip-flops. I am the PTA president and I take my job seriously; it is the only job I have known since deciding a decade ago to stay home with my kids.
A team of us diehards are here in the wee hours of the night, unloading items from the gala that did not get picked up. We are almost done, giddy at the success of the event but also bonetired, the last effects of the copious Prosecco we drank having worn off in the U-Haul truck. We are thanking the dad who performed the manly duty of driving and unloading the truck. He is cute: tall and scruffy with a British accent that has all the moms here swooning.
He says goodbye and turns to leave, but then does an about-face.
“There’s one thing I have to do before I leave,” he says, swiftly marching around the moms and the desk and planting a kiss firmly on my lips. It is the most passionate kiss I’ve received in two decades since first hooking up with my college sweetheart, whom I would go on to marry. He is gone before I even understand what happened.
The room erupts in nervous and confused laughter and we carry on. A few hours later, makeup scrubbed and messy hair pulled into a ponytail for school drop-off, I bump into the dad outside school.
“Can we pretend that didn’t happen? I’m sorry, I don’t know what got into me,” he says. I blush and nod my head, but I wonder—had I sent off some kind of signal that would have led him to be so bold? And did I wish for more?
I am in my late thirties and will go on to flirt with men who are not my husband. I am not wholly aware I am doing it, but I am very aware of the benign crushes I have: on the swarthy twenty-something guy who inherited the pizza place on the corner, whose gaze I hold when I order a slice for my son every afternoon after school; on the Adonis who sells fruit and weed on the beach in the Caribbean whose eyes I can feel burning into me as I saunter down the beach with my kids and husband; on the barrel-chested dad with whom I wile away blazing afternoons at the local pool while our spouses work and we mind the kids.
I desire these men but less in a physical way than an emotional one—though I certainly find them physically appealing, it is their attention I crave as I see myself through their eyes: not as a harried and underappreciated mom but as a vibrant woman who deserves a second look.
Years later, my husband is no longer an impediment to my finding out what happens when flirting takes a foothold in reality and not just fantasy. I am forty-seven, and I am neither single nor married. My husband has had an affair and I do not want him back, but I don’t want to be without him either. I am a woman in transition: no longer ripe and young, but not quite past my expiration date either; committed to the idea of my marriage more than the reality of it; a mother to two children who are soon to fly from the nest but another so young she is missing her front teeth. I am neither here nor there, teetering in the middle where any step can take me back to where I was or forward to the great unknown; I may yet find my best self or, terrifyingly, pray for a return to the self that turns out to have been the best one if I am lucky enough to find her.
I edge my way forward, planning baby steps: First, try to look beautiful. This is no easy task. I feel dead inside; putting on lipstick and mascara will only result in presenting me as a corpse ready for her unveiling. I try to use other senses and land on smell. I slather French rose body oil on my skin and the scent is subtle but rich, not overpowering but soft and mellow. I tend to the rest of myself as best I can, letting my curls dry naturally, dabbing concealer on the deep purple underlines of my eyes. I do not need a man to find me and passionately kiss me—I need to be seen; I need to know I am not a ghost. I am still here, I want to shout to anyone who may hear me: rejected and humbled, aging and uncertain, but here, I am here.
I take myself out on the town. I am a city girl but I am in the country for the summer, and town is a small, quiet affair with limited options. I make a deal with myself: one drink and then I can crawl back into my burrow. I walk into a bar on a Saturday night alone. I take it in: the couples leaning intimately toward each other, groups of friends throwing their heads back in laughter. I feel alone in the most primal, aching way. I am not just unaccompanied in a room full of people who are together; I am lonesome and forsaken. If there had ever been a time during my marriage when I fantasized about having a one-night hall pass, this was not what it looked like. That notion had been illicit and exhilarating; this is a sorrowful house of mirrors in which every angle shows me in my unattached state as a woeful and abandoned creature.
I realize with sudden alacrity that anything that happens or doesn’t happen from this moment on is up to me. No one can save me: not my beloved friends or my supportive mother or my husband who is about to be no more. Either I choose to go forward, or I choose to go back; this state of purgatory can only last so long. I am on my own. Scariest of all, I will have to own whatever I choose.
As has been the case in many pivotal moments in my life, I am driven by two parallel desires: one, to live, to really live, not simply coast through my life; two, to do whatever I have to do not to feel regret later. If I don’t try, I won’t know, and right now I have a burning need to know. Who am I beneath the surface, what can I be aside from a wife and a mother? All those years when sex was limited to the safety of my marital bed, I engaged in it because it was expected of me. I had a waning interest in sex over the years, but I didn’t miss it, what it had been when it was fun and carefree, what it had been before it became an occupation—first to get pregnant, then to satisfy my husband. I had traded a vibrant sex life for motherhood and what had been, for a long time, a happy marriage. But now, being single, I am going to date again, and dating means sex, not to make babies or keep my husband placated but simply for the sake of feeling another body against my own, for the purpose of making me feel full and sated: pleasure for no other sake than pleasure itself.
Amidst the small groups gathered around the long mahogany bar, I spot a man. I sense, right away, that he is the one. No woman in sight, no wedding band on his finger. There is something in his jaunty manner and easy laugh that catches my attention. I stare, openly and without self-consciousness—after all, I am unseeable, and a ghost can do as she pleases. He makes his way next to me; I find my voice. I do what I think I am supposed to do as we chat: smile until my dimples deepen, shrug my shoulders suggestively, shake my curls until he tells me that my hair smells good. After an hour of this, I know that I need more. I want him to see me naked; I want the warmth of our bare bodies to merge. I want to feel physically tethered to him and, by extension, to this world.
I invite myself to his hotel room, and there, while he uses the bathroom, I shed my clothes. I will be seen, I will be touched, I will be inhaled. I want it all, all that has been forbidden to me in the past twenty-seven years, all that I convinced myself didn’t matter to me anymore. He enters me and I think, So this is it; I am almost fifty and losing my virginity for the second time in my life.
I was sixteen the first time and didn’t know I was allowed to want to feel sexual pleasure, didn’t think sex was for me as much as it was for him. I was thirty-eight and kissed by a veritable stranger and felt like a giggling, shy teenager again; any desires that ignited in me I immediately shut down so I could continue to live satisfactorily in the life I had created. Now, here in midlife, softer around the edges, my body having done the job I most wanted it to do, producing three babies who stretched my skin and sucked milk from my breasts until they sagged, in bed with a man I have known for mere hours, I feel alive.
He says words that I repeat as if I am learning a new language: pussy, cock, f**k. I feel his tongue on my clitoris, I put his penis in my mouth. I feel it all, every lick, flicker, touch, and thrust. I have never been f**ked before, of that I am suddenly certain, and my body is both succumbing to it and demanding more. I orgasm and instead of feeling sated, I want another.
Lying back against him as we catch our breaths, I run my index finger along the edges of the tattoo on his shoulder. “You’re going to be OK,” he says, and I cannot manage a response. This man has beheld me in all my vulnerability and power and has affirmed for me what I have believed only to the most infinitesimal degree: I will one day emerge from the chaos swirling inside of me, and I will be OK.
I drive away, back home, a dull ache between my legs and a grain of hope in the calmness of my breath, back to the sleigh bed I shared for so many years with my husband and whichever child found their way between us during the night. I put my hand over my heart, my patch of pubic hair, the curve of my hips, my breasts that spill to the sides of my body. I am far from the withered shell of a woman I have believed myself to be, nearing her sell-by date. This body is mine; it has only ever belonged to me. I let people use it all these years, boyfriends and my husband and my kids, but I am reclaiming it now to satisfy the desires I thought were long gone, if they ever even existed.
Yes, I think, I am going to be OK; I am already finding my way.
Laura Friedman Williams is the author of Available: A Very Honest Account of Life After Divorce, which explores themes of self-discovery, resilience and the complexities of relationships. She is a frequent contributor of personal essays to Human Parts on Medium, where she has continued to blend personal reflection with themes of family, love, sex, loss and the pursuit of fulfillment.
She has also written for VogueUK, has been featured in The New York Post, and has appeared on dozens of podcasts discussing midlife divorce. She lives in New York City.
Please Please Me has been reposted with permission. The original essay can be found in Midlife Private Parts, a soulful and revealing collection of essays that explore the many facets of this transformative time in life. Each story sheds light, with humanity and good humor, on what it really feels like to move through the world as a midlife woman and beyond. To learn more about the book visit www.midlifeprivateparts.com.
Starting over in midlife can mean figuring out love, sex and relationships all over again. Check out more of our very honest conversations about love and relationships here.
