Private Thoughts by Wendy Maltz

Author:Wendy Maltz
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New World Library

JANE’S STORY:

A PATH TO A SATISFYING RELATIONSHIP

On a Sunday in autumn, Jane is enjoying a rare afternoon at home by herself. Her son, in his early teens, has just left for a movie. She waves us to a seat in her living room where books from this semester’s literature classes are piled into precariously tall stacks. As she puts on hot water for tea, Jane explains that a friend from college told her about our fantasy research, and she decided on an impulse to share her story. She enters the room with a tray of steaming teacups, drops onto a large floor pillow, and yawns. “I’m a little tired today,” she says, stretching out her long legs. “I’m almost thirty-seven years old, a single parent, and here I am back in school. My son and I race to see who gets to use the computer first at night. I’m working so hard, but this is exactly what I want to be doing with my life right now.”

Jane has traveled far from her childhood in Boston, where she attended parochial schools, wore neatly pressed uniforms, and grew up with the message that even thinking about sex was bad for the soul. “The nuns used to tell us we were accountable for our thoughts. We were not supposed to have sexual pleasure, even in our minds.” Now, here she sits in her favorite blue jeans and a colorful, snug-fitting T-shirt that shows off her womanly curves, about to divulge her favorite masturbatory fantasies. “Pretty ironic, huh?” she laughs.

As she begins to tell her story, Jane explains that she can’t relate how much her fantasies have taught her without also describing the different kinds of relationships she has had with men. Although it’s taken her years to solve the riddle, fantasy has been giving her important information about the qualities she yearns to find in a life partner.

Jane pulls a dog-eared scrapbook from a bookshelf and thumbs through to find a picture of herself as a shy-looking teenager. Puffy, blond bangs hang low on her face, almost hiding her wide brown eyes. Although her face looks young, her body is quite mature. In the picture, taken in front of her suburban home, she’s arm in arm with a taller, older, and very muscular boy.

“I will never forget Ed, my first boyfriend from when I was about fourteen. He was so good-looking, I couldn’t believe he was interested in me. I was only a freshman, and he was a senior. After we’d been going out for a few weeks, I told my mom I was thinking about having sex with him. Actually, it was Ed’s idea. That was all he ever talked about. My mom freaked out. She said, no, don’t, it’s horrible. Then she described her honeymoon night to me. It was basically a rape scene. I was too young to hear that, especially when she told me that was the night I was conceived. That blew my mind, hearing that I was the product of marital rape.

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