Nona Willis Aronowitz. - Bad sex: truth, pleasure, and an unfinished revolution /

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

penguinrandomhouse.com

Copyright 2022 by Nona Willis Aronowitz

Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

PLUME and P colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.

Portions of this work were previously published by the author in a different form in the following: What Happened When the Mother of Non-Monogamy Fell Head Over Heels in Love, by Nona Willis Aronowitz on Elle.com, February 13, 2019. I Wish I Wasnt Married: In Defense of Domestic Partnerships for Straight Couples, by Nona Willis Aronowitz on GOOD.is, July 16, 2011. The First Time Women Shouted Their Abortions, by Nona Willis Aronowitz on NYTimes.com, March 23, 2019. Meet the Woke Misogynist, by Nona Willis Aronowitz on Splinternews.com, March 12, 2017. The Male Feminist Movement Time Forgot, by Nona Willis Aronowitz on Vice.com, March 18, 2019.

Are Straight People OK? How We Can Improve Heterosexuality, by Nona Willis Aronowitz on TeenVogue.com Cond Nast, November 10, 2020.

Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists: Excerpts from The Slow Dance from Loving in the War Years: Lo que nunca pas por sus labios, copyright 1983 by Cherre Moraga; and Where Beauty Resides from The Last Generation: Prose & Poetry, copyright 1993 by Cherre Moraga. The two volumes are to be reissued in a one volume edition by Haymarket Books in 2023. By permission of Stuart Bernstein Representation for Artists, New York, NY, and protected by the Copyright Laws of the United States. All rights reserved. The printing, copying, redistribution, or retransmission of this content without express permission is prohibited.

Cheryl Clarke: Except from the poem great expectations from Living as a Lesbian: Poetry, copyright 1986 by Cheryl Clarke, published by Firebrand Books in 1986, and reissued by Sinister Wisdom in 2014. Reprinted by permission of the poet.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

has been applied for.

ISBN 9780593182765 (hardcover)

ISBN 9780593182772 (ebook)

Cover design by Kaitlin Kall

BOOK DESIGN BY KRISTIN DEL ROSARIO, ADAPTED FOR EBOOK BY ESTELLE MALMED

Some names and identifying characteristics have been changed to protect the privacy of the individuals involved.

pid_prh_6.0_140632920_c0_r0

For my parents

Introduction

In the last few days of 2016, everything in my life and in America was in extreme disarray. I was thirty-two years old. My marriage was falling apart. My father was a year out from a massive stroke that had changed both our lives. My forays into fresh pleasures had left my heart and libido suffering from overexposure. The country was reeling after that infamous election. I was constantly snifflingfrom crying, and also from the sinus infection that had rudely shown up on top of everything else. I felt at sea, and not in the placid way, in the thrash-around way. I looked at the crumpled-up tissues piled on my coffee table and between the cushions of my couch, and I had a strong wish to put my former life back together again, even though some of this turmoil had been my own doing.

In more hopeful moments, Id feel the elation of dispensing with fear and inhibition. Id be grateful for this intervention and the chance to rewrite my story. But during those few days, when self-doubt filled up the lonely void between Christmas and New Years, I wondered: Did I really blow up a relationship that lasted a quarter of my life, just because of bad sex?

What even is bad sex? Its a cruel descriptor, both lazy and below the belt, an indictment of everyone involved. When people heard the title of this book, they assumed I would be discussing the nuts and bolts of the sexual act: stale technique and sexual dysfunction, low libido and the orgasm gap. To me, the mechanics of sex are important but limited. Im far more concerned with the broader question of what cultural forces interfere with our pleasure, desire, and relationship satisfaction. And Im particularly concerned with a dilemma recognizable to many women who fuck men: sex has never been more normalized, feminism has never been more popular, romantic relationships have never been more malleableyet we still havent transcended the binds that make sex and love go bad.

We have not, for instance, succeeded in avoiding dudes who dont notice were having a bad time, or notice but dont seem to care, or pretend to care but actually dont. We continue to deal with guys who cross our boundaries in some way, transforming bad sex (or even good sex) into something shitty and murky and scary. We still often end up indulging mens fantasies rather than our own. Were told that being vulnerable is the key to love and lust, and yet its easier said than done.

Even the most sexually confident among us sometimes hesitate to talk about all this, because we dont want to hurt our partners feelings or seem demanding, because we want to appear as horny as we initially advertised ourselves to be, because the length of time it takes us to orgasm will spoil the mood, because were physically or emotionally afraid, because too much is at stake, because were simply not sure what we want. We still seem to face unpleasant consequences, both blatant and insidious, when we do talk about certain things that, even in the most progressive circles, are still treated like TMI.

Of course, sometimes bad sex, or a bad relationship, isnt anybodys fault. It may be caused by incompatibility, a dearth of attraction, an absence of chemistry. For some, this kind of neutral, blameless bad sex is a relatively small thing, certainly nothing to end a marriage over. For me, though, bad sex was the gateway that revealed all kinds of other truths. It was the thing that eventually exposed the desires I was ignoring in favor of societys expectations, which led to a break in the hum of my life, which in turn forced the questions: What, exactly, do I want? And are my sexual and romantic desires even possible amid the horrors and bribes of patriarchy, capitalism, and white supremacy?

This book is about the necessity, but also the complexity and absurdity, of answering those questions. Theyre questions I ask myself many times throughout this story, which mostly unfolds between fall of 2015 and the end of 2020. Even with very little distance from them, I think we can all agree that these years were a wild time to be alive in America, and an even wilder time for ones life to take a sharp turn toward the unknown. This has been a time of fear and death, but also of reckoning and reimagining. Its made me curious about other times in history that vibrated with the same transformative energy. About what I could learn from revolutionaries of the past who lived through moments when the norms of sexuality changed.