The Sexual Education of a Beauty Queen

by Taylor Marsh

  I can so relate on the missing “marriage chip” thing. I absolutely didn’t have it either. When I met my husband, I told him so. Marriage was never for me. I never wanted it. The thing is, Mark demanded it. He gave me a very straightforward ultimatum. His case was that we were in love, he knew who I was and the course I was on, and that marriage was the only way he’d sign on. I had to take the jump and marry him, or it was over. It was that simple for him.

  It blew me away. The ultimatum didn’t come off harsh, because the case he made was very convincing. He was willing to risk it all, fight the fight with me, protect and love me, but that it had to be an all-in proposition. Knowing I had always been just passing through Las Vegas from the start, while he had never lived anywhere else in his adult life, he knew he’d have to live in another city, away from where his family lived, to be with me. Women are asked to do this all the time. Men rarely are.

  It was all or nothing for him, and it needed to be for me, too, which for Mark meant marriage.

  I could have committed to living with him forever, but marriage? It’s the last thing I wanted from him, something I didn’t need from him either. We loved each other madly and that was enough for me.

  I’ll never forget looking into Mark’s eyes the day he proposed the final time, laying it on the line one last time. I’d never seen such intensity, such fierce love and understanding coming from a man. In that instant, I simply knew he’d deliver and stand tough in the turbulence I knew he’d face. I’d had many an adventure, but sure didn’t want to hurt this wonderful man, so I’d told him how difficult it would be. We weren’t kids and we both knew ourselves, and what we wanted from a life together. Then I asked myself, what’s the worst thing that can happen? There was no other decision to make but to go for it.

  We had met in July and were married in December of the same year. None of my friends believed me when I said I was engaged. When I asked my sister Susie to be my maid of honor she said, call me in a month and if it’s still on I’ll do it. Marrying Mark is the most important decision I’ve made in my life and the best one, too.

  If my sexual education in the trenches proves anything, especially in my own life, it’s what Victor Hugo said: “There’s nothing more powerful than an idea whose time has come.”

  I’m talking about the idea that a woman can expect a man to be an equal partner in a relationship, but also in a marriage, which can include signing on for a career adventure that doesn’t come with a net. A man can choose to believe in a woman’s purpose, creativity and vision, knowing it doesn’t devalue his own contributions in any way. When he truly believes that what she’s exploring is worth betting on, a man can feel pride sharing in her success, which validates the choice he made to take the leap with her.

  It means marriage can survive redefinition from the traditionalist model and work at least as well as an equal partnership that includes two careers, because there are no tasks defined strictly by gender anymore. We’re carving out a revolutionary way to think about marriage that empowers women and gives us a shot at leading, which was once only experienced by men. The men in turn get a chance to enjoy home life, including being an equal partner in raising children, if the couple chooses.

  Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg put it succinctly in her book Lean In: “A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes. I believe that this would be a better world.”

  Smart women also know, as Sandberg wrote, that one of the most important decisions a woman makes is about the man whom she decides to date and commit to.

  Committing to someone, often through marriage, is the most difficult adventure in life. It’s one of the most rewarding, too. But if it works, you will still be living a solitary life, too, having an adventure on your own, outside the one you’re having with your mate.

  We each live in our own world, so if you want a healthy life, you will also maintain your own privacy, while giving him his. You will have solitary experiences that don’t include your partner, though not ones that should threaten your relationship. These are the personal moments you can choose to bring back to him to discuss over cocktail hour or dinner at night, sharing the amazing things you learned during your day away from one another. Separate experiences that matter to you both, if in different ways. They expand you as a person, while transmitting to your partner that you’re engaged in your own life, excited and fulfilled by your own journey.

  Modern people need downtime to take a breath, to be alone. It can be as simple as time to read a book, go to the gym, catch up on paperwork, even watch television. The battle of the sexes is over, but we haven’t yet replaced it with a modern deal between the sexes, an all-for-me-means-all-for-you-too grace. It can be a replica inside our relationship that mimics the distance we had when we first started dating that creates space for longing and appreciation that reminds us of when we met, before convenience took hold — part of the alchemy of your love.

  The magic that ignites the potential of the modern relationship that starts with a physical whiff. The scent of someone who ignites the sexual chemistry that immediately hits you, even if you can’t explain it. The moment we meet someone unique that could come down to an involuntary reaction to the way he or she smells. Our nose may tell us how we feel before our heart or head engages. But when it happens, we sense it first.

  The rest is about timing…

  …and believing you deserve it. It’s trusting that you are worthy of finding delicious, sexually thrilling, life-altering love. That it can happen to you and that someone would be fortunate to be loved by you. It’s that meeting of minds, body and energy that allows two people to form an alliance to take on the world.

  Meeting someone who ignites that mysterious part of you, who can inspire you to be more than you are by yourself. A partnership that challenges your notion of the life you want, including what’s possible to experience with someone else. Attracting a partner who excites you to add the adventure of being part of a team. All for whatever you desire, both for each other and forever together.

  Of all of the things I’ve learned in the trenches, talking to more men and women that I can accurately count, there is one constant. Everyone desires an electric connection, a person that sets your life aflame. Someone who inspires you to get naked and risk living out loud in front of them and with them every day. From there it can be further defined, sometimes fitting sublimely into marriage, sometimes not. It’s not the delineation that matters. It’s the agreement between you on what it is that you’ve got and that what you’ve discovered is worth protecting.

  If you’re living an authentic life of your own design and imagination, someone can fly into your life and force you to make room so they fit.

  Prepare to be surprised.

  Then say yes.

  Acknowledgments

  The first political writing I ever did was on November 23, 1963, after President John F. Kennedy was assassinated. It wasn’t until 2011 that I was handed the index cards I wrote on that day by my big brother Larry, the scribbling on them by a little girl chronicling what she saw on television. This was the instant politics became real to me, which was cemented years later when Gloria Steinem kicked off the modern feminist revolution that changed my world forever. Little did I know it would all end up where it has, including writing this book.

  There aren’t words to express how grateful I am to my creative counsel and great friend Judith Proffer, and everyone at Padaro Press. Judy and I have been on this road together for twenty years now, as plotters and dreamers, separately, but always together, no matter how many miles may separate us. I learned what it’s like to have an engaged publisher, someone who loves books and nurtures the vision by extracting all a writer has to give, then asks for a little bit more.

  Applause for designSimple, and art director Dave Shulman, who are responsible for the cover to cover creative packaging in which this writing is nestled.

  Thanks to Premier Digital
Publishing who published my second book, The Hillary Effect, which was instrumental in making this book possible. When everyone thought Hillary Clinton’s 2008 campaign was old news, Thomas Ellsworth of Premier Digital Publishing knew they were wrong, with Barnes & Noble picking it as the first political book in their Nook “featured authors” launch. PDP continues to stand behind The Hillary Effect, and now the title is available online and in paperback in 2014 through Open Road Media.

  Eric Estrin has been my editor on two books now, fact-checking material, challenging me on content, for which I am grateful. Additional proofreading by Frank Culbertson was invaluable.

  I’ve bugged my older brother Larry my entire adult life to keep adding morsels to our family history so I could one day put it all together. If he hadn’t been so diligent, I’d never have made sense of the puzzle. It was my sister Susie who produced the final corner piece at our sibling reunion in 2011.

  About my big sister… It was Susie and her late husband Steve who provided the first healthy relationship I ever saw between a man and a woman, an epic love affair by every measure. Oh, and did they know how to party! I will be forever grateful for their generosity. I idolized Susie as a kid, hung on her every action, and will never forget her taking me to Our Lady of Fatima, my first introduction into Catholicism that eventually led me to the Episcopal Church that changed my journey of faith. My relationship with Susie was one of the casualties of our father Floyd, her forgiveness and our reconnection becoming part of the private chapter in this story that made for a happy ending.

  I’m indebted to both Larry and Susie for respecting my creative journey, even if the artistic path I am on is difficult to understand. They each made sure their children got autographed copies of The Hillary Effect, so my nephew and nieces might better understand what the hell is up with their aunt, who lives in another universe.

  Continued gratitude goes to Lorie Miller, Vice President, Web Services of AgoraNet Inc., who has been indispensible to me over many years. There aren’t enough superlatives to heap on Lorie to express all she’s done for me, from expertise to her professional graciousness, while keeping my new-media site humming and continually on the cutting edge. Lorie and the AgoraNet team are the best in the business, and I can say that with some authority.

  To the readers of TaylorMarsh.com over many years now, I am blessed to have such loyal followers, as well as haters. If it weren’t for my readers, I wouldn’t be able to get my books published.

  A very special shout-out is deserved to the people who support my new-media site through subscriptions and donations. You make all the difference, as do my advertisers. It’s the way independent writers like myself survive in the brutally competitive new-media world, where mega-sites gobble up the advertising dollars and the traffic, too.

  The love of my life, my husband Mark, makes everything in my life more joyful, with every second I spend with him a gift. Nothing could have kept me off the path I have forged, which started long before we met, but meeting him and becoming true partners has added immeasurably to my work, not to mention my life, and understanding of love and marriage. He’s the strongest feminist male I know, for which I have his late mother Joanne to thank. Having a courageous partner has made me a more uncompromising thinker and writer in every way.

  Mom, wherever you are, and I hope you are finally at peace, thank you. My mother not only gave me life, but refused to accept when it was time to leave, because she knew I still needed her. Because of her unflinching fearlessness, her ability to withstand everything that was thrown at her, I was able to do the same. Every tiny success I have is hers to share with Mark, whom I wish she could have met.

  I’ve had a lot of creative dreams in my life, but being able to write what I’d learned about relationships and sex in the trenches always seemed a bridge too far. There was so much I had to face myself before I could write this story, so I needed a lot more than a room of my own to get it done. The timing was finally perfect, thirteen years after 9/11 hit and blew me onto the course that’s become a seminal chapter in my life. It’s just one reason I can relate to Hillary Clinton saying, “Never give in, never give up on your dreams,” just keep on going.

  Thanks for buying this book.

  Maybe it will help my husband get more time off. Though for him it really boils down to what he wants for me. Witnessing the endless hours watching me work, he believes in what I’m doing and wants for me the full rewards that he thinks I’ve earned. I’ve got so much, because what was once my work is now our passion and a joint adventure that revolves around changing our corner of the universe, while having fun doing it.

  The ultimate lesson I’ve learned by living it is that it’s possible for a female artist, thinker and writer to find a partner and create a wildly unpredictable and lively relationship of love, lust and purpose, which doesn’t require sacrificing that thing that drives you. It didn’t happen through searching for it or forcing it to happen. It manifested while I was doing what I love, that thing that makes me tick.

  About the Author

  Taylor Marsh is best known for being a “die hard Clintonite,” as the Washington Post described her in a 2008 profile, “For Clinton, a Following of ‘Marshans.’” The New Republic profile of Clinton in 2008, “The Hugh Hefner of Politics,” chronicles Marsh from her artistic career into politics. A contributor to the Huffington Post, as well as other sites, Marsh’s blog (www.taylormarsh.com) was on the front lines during the 2008 election season.

  Marsh grew up in St. Louis, Missouri, where she was Miss Teenage St. Louis and was crowned Miss Missouri. She attended Stephens College in Columbia, Missouri, where she was born, graduating with a BFA. Next stop was Broadway, where Jerry Herman cast her after her very first audition. Marsh has produced her own one-woman show on JFK and her life growing up in the midst of the feminist revolution, and has done national television commercials.

  In the early 1990s, Marsh worked at the alternative news source LA Weekly in the personal ad department as “relationship consultant,” with her column “What Do You Want?” dispensing relationship advice mixed with a little politics. In 1997, she jumped to become managing editor of one of the first outlets online to make money, a softcore site covered on the front page of the Wall Street Journal, U.S. News & World Report, and USA Today. Marsh took her long-established new-media career to blogging during the Kerry campaign of 2004. But it was the 2008 election and Marsh’s fearless coverage of the campaign that catapulted her.

  Marsh has been interviewed by the BBC, CNN, MSNBC, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, Al Jazeera Arabic, and Al Jazeera English, among others, including radio from coast to coast. Marsh has been featured in the The Hill, the Washington Scene, National Journal’s Hotline On Call, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times Online, and many other new-media and traditional news venues.

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  Disclaimer: Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the identities of individuals. Any views, opinions, writings or other content of this book are solely those of the author.

  Copyright © 2014 by Taylor Marsh

  Cover by designSimple

  ISBN 978-1-4976-6313-8

  This 2014 edition distributed by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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