Prologue
2023
Hi, I’m Eliza Coleman, but my friends and family call me Lizzie.
Actually, that’s not true. It’s one of the only things in this book that’s a lie. Another one is about my husband, Jack. That’s not his name either. In fact, all names have been changed to protect the innocent, as well as the not-so-innocent. But the rest of this story is as true as I remember it to be.
Truth is indeed a fickle thing. With my extended family, at work, and in public, I seem to be a pretty “normal” Midwestern forty-year-old woman. I’m married, I have four kids, I drive a minivan, and I have two rescue dogs. I’m one of those people who looks like someone you know…skinny, short, brown hair, brown eyes, symmetrical face. I wear a lot of neutrals. I’m clean and courteous. I don’t especially stand out and I tend not to speak up, but I’m not uncomfortably shy.
The surface-level version of my story sounds classic and sweet. I married my high school sweetheart and together we rode off into the suburban sunset, securing noble careers in finance (Jack) and as a librarian (that’d be me).
Viewed from the polite outside perspective, my life is orderly and tidy, just like my house. Everything is organized; everything has a place or a system. I meal plan on Thursdays and meal prep Sunday mornings. I’m more likely to be found reading books than watching TV, and I have a habitual workout circuit that involves yoga, walking outside, and weight lifting. I enjoy planning capsule wardrobes for each season. I journal to sort out my feelings.
But no one’s life is only order — we all need a little chaos to balance things out. How do I let loose? Some people have sports. Others play the stock market, or drink craft beers, or spend significant amounts of time shopping at boutiques. Me? It’s tough to find an answer when pressed by the other moms at the bus stop. I’ll usually mutter something about concerts or kayaking, but really, it’s sex.
Problem is, talking about sex is still a touch taboo. There’s a stigma in being a forty-year-old woman deeply interested in sexuality, enough to make me second guess myself here. Is this frivolous? Is this smut? Should I be ashamed?
I’m often told that I’m doing life well. My kids’ teachers praise them for being independent, fun, and smart. I’m successful at work, and so is Jack. We all have plenty of good friends.
People also remark on our marriage. We’re extraordinary, exemplary, they say. What’s your secret?
It’s not just sex, of course. We’re best friends, too. We have similar values, we’re both into self growth, and we communicate openly and often. But we also heavily attribute our extraordinary relationship to our robust sex life, so isn’t there something to that?
I’ve read the research, and sure, I could recite it to you. Sex is important for stress relief, improved sleep, better quality long term romantic relationships, yadda yadda. Thing is, I’m a librarian, not a sexologist. I’m a believer in credible information as well as the power of story and the personal narrative.
Here, I want to tell you my story. I want to provide those typically glossed-over details, because I think they’re important. They meant something to me, and maybe they’ll mean something to you, too.
I’ll start with my young love for Jack and power through the depressing slump in the bedroom when the babies came. My body and brain really went to shit during that eleven year span. If you had asked me then, I’d have told you that adulting sucked. I love my kids, but I lost myself in the process of birthing, milking, and fulfilling my societal expectations as a middle-class mom.
Nothing a bag of weed and a nude beach in Jamaica couldn’t fix, apparently. That’s oversimplifying it, but it was a blast. That’s when Jack and I started to thrive, when our sex life was revived. That’s when I started acting on all the desires I’d spent my entire life, up until then, suppressing.
But one thing led to another, and suddenly I found myself in the midst of another story altogether. A story of discovering not only my sexuality, but also enlightenment and true love.
My path to peace isn’t what you’d expect from me if we were to meet at a PTO-sponsored family fun night. My story is too taboo to tell coworkers or casual friends. It’s like the challenged books that I advocate to keep on the shelves in my library — layered. Complicated. It could easily end up sounding like filth if you take it out of context.
Very few people in real life know my entire truth, how I grapple with shame and guilt. I rarely tell people about my internal struggles with anxiety, depression, and existentialism. No one really knows how deep the bond is between me and Jack, how his presence can calm me, set my heart aflame, and arouse me to the point that I need to change my panties.
By some, my story will be called “pornography.” But my intent isn’t to turn you on.
So what am I doing? Am I trying to justify the actions I’ve taken? Maybe I’m just a perverted exhibitionist who gets off on divulging the details of my sexual experiences. Maybe I’m a romantic, so touched by Jack’s love that I want to shout it from the mountaintops. Maybe I’m a woo-woo hippie mom who wants to normalize sex in a way that allows her four children to grow up confident in mind, body, and spirit, rather than ashamed of their deepest desires.
I feel more like myself at age forty than I ever have before, and I’m just dying to tell someone how I got here. And why shouldn’t I? Is my experience shameful? Are my ideas just filth? Are my actions obscene? I’ll be toeing the line between the truth and TMI, perhaps. I was raised “better than this,” if you ask my mother. And yet, Jack proclaims that he’s never loved me more.
I was once anxious about death; now I’m intentional about living my life to the fullest.
I digress, and I’m being coy, aren’t I? I said that I wanted to tell you my story. Perhaps I’m stalling because I’m fearful. I’ll admit that it feels like a bit of a risk to bare it all. I could turn out to be an outcast, a ludicrous suburbanite with nothing better to do than dwell on her own sexual awakening. The risk is that I share myself, and it turns out that I’m nothing more than a fool.
Then again, we’re all going to die, right? So what the hell. This is the story of my evolution from closeted teen to cranky mom of four to bisexual, monogamish forty-year-old woman married to a dreamboat of a man. It’s pretty kinky for a love story, but I think that adds a little something.
You’ll see.