By god, it felt good

Once upon an age, my therapist told me it was common for women in their 40s to go off, to engage in a wild uptick of sexy, steamy, spicy times before plunging into perimenopause. I’m paraphrasing. I didn’t pay much attention, because it didn’t apply to me. I was busy tucking children into bed, waving night-night to my husband, and dancing myself sick, three or four nights a week, after balling whatever younger lover I was keeping time with. They were always younger (all but one, and we’re still together), which made the arrangement easier to contain. Those hedonistic nights often ended with me eating gobs of poutine next to a Cartlandia fire pit, chatting-up strangers, inviting them to the next Video Dance Attack at Lola’s Room or to ‘80s Skate at the local roller rink. I now see that I may have been a hissing wick back then, sparking and climbing toward a midlife sexual explosion, my own July 4th finale.

By god, it felt good.

In the day, when I wasn’t momming my four kids—cooking, cleaning, driving, managing every playdate, doctor's appointment, and afterschool program—I was a children’s music teacher. Sometimes, while strumming my guitar and singing to more than a dozen adoring, wide-eyed, tottering, little humanoids and their accompanying circle of grown-up devotees, I’d wonder if it was wrong to have been at a sex club the night before, strangers wanting to join in, cheering, or quietly watching, or was it perfectly right, a natural juxtaposition of night and day, adults and children and the complex roles we perform independent of one another, equally important and equally blissful?

It was the best day job ever.

From Boston to Los Angeles to Portland, I was always an author and performer, but working with kids and their parents made me want to write about motherhood and sexual proclivity right alongside one another, an examination of the Madonna-Whore complex, which, in my case, included sexual incompatibility within marriage. Many of my music families knew I was writing a book. The most I’d say was that it was a NSFW novel. I never shared the plot. Never told them I kept a secret dirty blog. Never let on that I was writing what is clearly a raunchy story of one woman’s sexual revolution. My music families were endlessly excited and supportive. Some asked to join my mailing list. I have no idea who they were or where they went. But I think fondly of those days, how glad I was to see their bright faces after so many sexy, steamy, spicy nights, how it gave me a sense of balance, a perfectly natural expression of body and spirit.

(a magazine article on managing family stress)