Praising Wild Women
March 2006

Author Gail Sheehy has a word for it: sluts in remission. So reports San Francisco Chronicle columnist Jane Ganahl in a recent interview with Sheehy, who is best known for her chronicles of womens' lives in transition like the classic Passages, and her latest, Sex And The Seasoned Woman. The "sluts" in question are women who came of age during the '60s and '70s, ready, willing and empowered to surf the first wave of the Sexual Revolution.

Sheehy's ironic phrase tweaks the old puritanical notion that a woman who enjoys her sexuality—especially outside the bonds of lawful matrimony—is a "fallen" or "soiled" woman. The "remission" part refers to a newfound sense of selectivity—but certainly not shame—that some of these women acquire in midlife.

In earlier centuries, the code word for a woman in charge of her own sexuality was "adventuress," which is closer to the way midlife women think of themselves these days. Especially in Santa Cruz. These parts are full of wild women, in remission or otherwise, who have always lived life with gusto. Not long ago, I went to a birthday party where five women sat around a table recounting the exploits of their youth: marriages, divorces and more marriages, one-night stands, long-term affairs with men and women, globe-trotting odysseys of self-discovery, children born and raised, love with the most improper strangers.

I felt like such a failure.

I never got in touch with my inner slut, although certainly not for lack of trying. I longed to have a wild, passionate life; indeed growing up in the barrier-busting '60s, it was promised to me in every rock lyric and magazine article. It took a little longer for the movies to come around. Looking For Mr. Goodbar was popular in those days, the last gasp of the outgoing moral regime to put adventurous young women in their place—in this case, the morgue—for daring to experiement with sex outside the marriage bed. But we weren't buying it. Our older sisters had burned their bras for our sins and we were ready to commit them. We had the Pill, and that put a truly revolutionary spin on our inalienable right to pursue happiness.

As a teenager, I harbored a fantasy of the exciting, liberated, grown-up life I would lead once I finally got out of school. I didn't go to college to learn a trade, much less meet a husband; school was just a toll booth on the grand expressway of life about to open up before me. Biking around Europe. Living in a cave on a Greek beach. Making a pilgrimage to Liverpool. Singing back-up in Leon Russell's traveling band, those were the things my friends and I envisioned ourselves doing out in the world. Settling down never occurred to us—that was for old people. We were still so young our dreams and our expectations were the same thing.

I remember the care my girlfriend Jan and I lavished on getting dressed and psyching ourselves up for any public appearance— drinks at the Cooperhouse, dancing at the Catalyst, midnight showings of The Rocky Horror Picture Show. Be prepared, that was our motto; you never knew when the next adventure would begin. In my dream scenario I expected to have many glorious love affairs along the parade route of life with a succession of fabulous, funny, cultured and caring men. Our inevitable partings would never be acrimonious. It would simply be time for both of us to move on.

But back on Planet Earth, I was in for a rude awakening. Fabulous, funny, cultured and caring men, I discovered, did not exactly sprout up like eucalyptus trees. And there was no guarantee I would recognize one at first glance, even if I happened to stumble across him. Relationships with life-sized human beings take time, energy and hard work, a daunting down-payment of trust, a dollop of alchemy, and pure blind luck. I didn't know how to have a casual relationship. And, sure, I've always been a comparison shopper, but once I finally found somebody (entirely by accident) ready to build a new life with me, I wasn't so eager to upgrade to a newer model, and so missed out on the volume of experience enjoyed by my more adventurous sisters.

Still it's not like we fledgling wild women were racking up conquests and notching our belts. Like every other generation, most of us entered into most new relationships thinking this would be the one. But unlike previous generations, we had more alternatives if such proved not to be the case. The Pill gave women the same options as men, to pick and choose, go or stay. Today we'd call it leveling the playing field.

And it's not game over yet. Married, divorced or widowed, childless or enjoying grandchildren, entering new relationships or happily solo by choice, the women of my generation are still wild at heart. And not just in the bedroom. The lessons of youth have taught us to keep shaking up our lives with new experiences, new work, new people, new places, new perspectives. Life's adventures don't stop at midlife, and it takes a seasoned adventuress with a passion for living to meet the challenge.

(Send your wild memories to lisajensen@sbcglobal.net)