Get Married or Die

just don’t get rejected by some guy from Venice Beach

If one were to guess the trajectory of a woman’s life by literary classics, there is nothing for her to do but die tragically or be married off.

Since I have yet to do either, I’m proud to announce that my favorite thing about living through this brave new phase known as perimenopause is the chemical castration. I’m not sure if it happens to everyone, and I’m not even sure if it’s happening to me, but I think I’ve mostly lost interest in mating.

Of course, on one of the first most delicious days of summer, I decide to run on the promenade that spans the Ventura Beach to test if I’m really as non-horny as I think I am. This route has historically been lustful for me. There’s a portion of it where surfers change out of wetsuits in the parking lot, rinse the sand from their bodies in the cold shower, and are just generally muscled glistening and hairy. I use the stir of it as inspiration to get more pleasure out of the grinding work of training my body to keep being a body. I’ve been running in less public places—streets that are mostly empty of other pedestrians, with less eye-contact and howdoyoudos.

It’s hot pink and coconut oil summer, though. Love Island is in full swing, the sun reflects off the pavement, the American flags flap in the breeze, stir our reflections on patriotism, and cravings for hot dogs. The islanders keep using “lustful” as a demerit in how certain people play the game on this season of Love Island USA—this on a show where every woman is in a cheeky bikini in peak breeding years, and all the challenges involve some level of seduction if not outright making out and dry-humping.

“I don’t like the way he moves. He’s being ‘lustful’” They say.

I don’t understand why I like this show. It feels like the writers are little kids smashing a diverse set of walking and talking Barbies and Kens against each other.

I think how wonderful it is that I don’t think about sex, getting sex finding a partner, or cuddling. On this run, I’m mostly concerned with my pace and breath. Desire used to take up so much of my waking thoughts. I used to swipe, chat, make arrangements to meet for coffee, wonder what he looks like without his shirt off, how he smells, how strong his arms are. Could he bench press me? Could he go again if he came too soon?

We have a family member who transitioned from female to male and when he started taking testosterone, he noticed that he became more horny and insensitive. I wonder how low my testosterone levels have fallen because the opposite is happening to me. Since going on HRT, I spend a lot of time considering how much of me is intrinsically me and how much is just the results of chemical ratios pumping through my veins. Holding onto our youth is deeper than just freezing the muscles that cause face wrinkles. Would I trade this quieting of the sex drive for a smooth neck? Why do I still want to look attractive if I don’t want to bring anyone close enough so that I have to smell him?

But am I really so not horny as I think I am? On this particular run, on this particular morning, the surfers are not out in abundance. There is, however a battalion of firefighters or firefighter trainees and captains on their run, going in the opposite direction of me. One mustached and especially roped one makes eye contact and gives me a little smirk. The tiniest flame flickers. I don’t even really find handsome men handsome anymore.

They all look like work.

They look like they are going to ask me what’s for dinner, and not going to like my answer. But this day, this particular group of men in the uniform of the off-duty hero, are kind of a turn-on. I see the back story of this run—that they’re getting fit to be the people who run into burning buildings, save cats, dogs, children and infirm people on the worst days of their lives.

I think this is why Love Island wouldn’t work for me—like if they decided to open it up to 45 year-old women who still kinda got it and look less like Meghan the Stallion and more like Sally Field. Men hanging out by the pool and making out with other women doesn’t do it. They’re always just…around. I need them to have a task that is not finding a woman that their attention is on. I need them to be whittling, finding a stud in the drywall, carving a big hunk of meat for our dinner. I like the idea of a man who is gone half of the time. Perhaps I’ve always desired absence because isn’t it more pleasurable to yearn than it is to have.

Is this boring of me? Is this like guys only wanting to date models? I only want to date men who are mostly not around and might die running into a burning building.

I told people in the months leading up to Karli’s departure that I would start dating again as soon as she moved. That I would just enjoy the last of our time together, and when she was good and gone, I would start swiping and batting my eyelashes again. The problem is that except for that group of 20 firefighters that only conceptually made me a little bit horny, the desire isn’t there.

I read All Fours, by Miranda July last year, which was regarded as a groundbreaking vignette on perimenopausal sexual exploration. In it the main protagonist becomes less married and more alive—a stark contrast to the treatment Tolstoy gave to Anna Karenina or Wharton gave to Lily Bart. I loved the unexpected twists in July’s narrative and after reading it immediately gave it to my sister and she loved it so we gave it to our other sister and she called it weird and annoying.

Since then, I’ve had a contentious relationship with the author’s newsletter while also being a fierce admirer of her and her writing and weird dance videos. I don’t understand how Miranda July keeps such a sexually charged and active readership. I want to want to be and stay as cool and relevant as all the writhing beasts being served by her very boutique, very exclusive online dating service—-the beguiled series—a service she started three months ago where readers who want to be matched with other Miranda July readers fill out a profile and July sends it to her readers. Maybe a couple she matches up will find lasting love and get married. And now we’ve come full circle—an author putting characters together. I upgraded to a paid subscription then hovered over the comment section thinking, I’m not cool enough to be here. I’m not even cool enough to be in my own comment section.

Sexuality feels like a raging river I’ve pulled myself mostly out of. Perhaps it is supposed to be this way. I find myself being overly negative when Karli tells me about her dating life, saying outrageous things like, “How do you know he’s not lying?” About a person I’ve never met and why he won’t be in contact with her for the next few days. I can’t resist projecting every bad experience I’ve ever had with a man onto my adult daughter. I forget that feeling of new love and how it can be this thing that undergirds and lifts you to the full throbbing beautiful moon through entire days and weeks until it shifts into something cozy you can curl up with.

She tells me it’s none of my business when I start going into how strong attachments to the wrong people can ruin your life. She is absolutely right, and I’m embarrassed at what a downer I’ve become.

Maybe that’s why this reality dating show about Gen Z kids still holds my interest despite the misophonia I get from the slobbery sounds of their mouths sucking on each other’s during challenges. I can watch vignettes of something that reflects the most meaningful and life-changing moments of my past.

On last night’s elimination, Jen was dumped from the island. She’s this gorgeous model girl who reminds me of Karli and my friend Briana mixed together. She was eliminated because no one chose her. All the women had to stand in a line like they were being picked for a kickball team, and in the end it’s just Jen and Amora left, with one dude who is literally the epitome of every SoCal Peter Pan floppy-haired bruh I’ve ever dated.

In a post show debrief with the producers she says, “If I wanted to be rejected by a guy from Venice Beach, I would have stayed in L.A.”

RIP, Jen

Photo: Ben Symons / Peacock.

Books that made me this way:

Help me:

Tell in the comments about any books you’ve read with a female protagonist who doesn’t end up all cozied up in a love match or die in the end. The plot must also not be driven by the pursuit or escape from love. It must be about everything else that might be interesting to a person. I currently have Miss Benson’s Beetle and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead on hold at the library. What else should I get? The weirder the better.