The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost

by Robin Rinaldi

  Back on the Flag Help Forum, an experienced user took the time to explain the situation. “Male readers probably didn’t like the tone of your post. Unfortunately, if enough users dislike and flag it, you’ll have to reword it in order to get it back up.” I searched other women’s questions as to why their posts were removed, and learned that male readers frequently flagged posts that didn’t include the woman’s “stats,” meaning her weight.

  “You could comply with every term in the book,” wrote one user, “but without the info the guys want (good physical stats) you’ll keep getting flagged.”

  Another wrote: “If they can’t verify you’re the body type they want, they flag, probably on a 90 percent basis. Sorry.”

  I decided to boycott Craigslist.

  I signed up for a Nerve.com account, and reposted the ad there with a few pictures. Since Nerve’s site was much more detailed, I also entered information like my favorite books, music, and movies.

  Within twenty-four hours, my Nerve inbox filled up with twenty-three prospective suitors, mostly men much younger than me. I’d never been a stunner, and I knew it wasn’t my fetching photos that reeled them in. Nor, I guessed, was it my devotion to Wilco or my preference for Milan Kundera novels. It was the fact that I was going to let them get away scot-free after three dates.

  But I didn’t concern myself with their intentions. All I wanted was their maleness, the very thing they most liked giving. I wanted their smells, their stomachs, their grasping hands and hungry mouths. The more maleness I had, the more female I could be. I sought it out despite the warnings of concerned friends, the obvious pain I was causing my husband, the moral code and defining boundaries of the self I’d known for forty-four years. Come what may, I would be ravished. And then they could leave.

  10

  Nerve

  IF CRAIGSLIST CASUAL ENCOUNTERS was the Walmart of hookups, Nerve.com was the hip designer boutique. The men tended to the smart, progressive end of the spectrum, in line with Nerve’s sex-friendly, urban content. And Nerve shared its personals with Salon.com, the Bay Area’s intellectual bellwether.

  Vetting the responses took several days. I grouped men into yes, no, and maybe lists. I had a thing for tall men. All four of the boyfriends in my humble history had been at least six feet. I tried to overcome this bias, adding a few short men to the list of those I decided to meet.

  One, a single dad and motorcycle rider dressed head to toe in black, met me at a coffee shop in Hayes Valley. When I asked what he did for a living he shrugged and said, “Lots of things.” When I asked how he’d describe himself, he said, “Very private. I don’t reveal a lot.” One down, twenty-two to go. Nothing turned me off like reticence.

  Several men over fifty answered my ad, even though that was my cutoff age. One large and fit man described himself as “Olympian” and promised that he was well endowed and schooled in the tantric arts. “I can take you places you’ve never been,” he assured me. This lured me into an email conversation to set up a date. Just as we were sealing the details, he mentioned that, by the way, he wouldn’t be using a condom. “I’m a believer in pleasure, and they are antithetical to my pleasure and my partner’s,” he wrote. With the Paul weekend still fresh in my mind, I replied, “That’s fine, but condoms are not negotiable for me. Good luck.” Making even simple boundaries with strange men pleased me as deeply as it had frightened me back in my twenties, the last time I’d been single.

  One of the profiles waiting in my Nerve queue featured close-up photos of a rippled torso. My coworker Ellen, as smart as she was beautiful, volunteered to act as my online dating consultant. She informed me that a bare six-pack in someone’s profile photos was a red flag: sleazy. But the sculpted abdomen evoked one of my occasional fantasies: the big, hairless brute, wide jawbone set inside a shaved skull, torso covered in tattoos, ass muscles arcing high above thick thighs, every surface of him a rock against which I could writhe or slam.

  Mr. Six-pack was a man of few words. His first note said simply, “You look in your twenties, miss.” He suggested meeting at the 500 Club, a dive bar in the Mission. He knew what I looked like while I had yet to see his face. Something told me to bring Ellen along, and our mutual friend Jenny came too. They walked in ahead of me and sat at the bar. When I entered, I saw a bald, muscular man, about thirty-five and leather clad, sitting alone in a booth. He met my eyes instantly and slanted his lips into a half smile that said I was exactly what he’d expected.

  “Pete?” I said, approaching his table. At least that’s what he called himself; he looked like the sort who used aliases. He nodded, one slight dip of the chin. “Nice to meet you,” I said, sliding in across from him. I asked the waitress for a gin and tonic and raised my eyebrows at him expectantly.

  “So,” I said. “Hi.”

  “Hullo.”

  I looked around the room, the kind of bar where all the maroon surfaces fade to black under low lighting. “Have you been waiting long?”

  “Nope.”

  There was perhaps a hint of brogue, though I would need more words to tell for sure, and he wasn’t offering them.

  “I like your jacket,” I said.

  He glanced down at it. “Thanks.”

  Sudden anger flashed through me. Who did he think he was, making me do all the work? I might be easy but I wasn’t desperate.

  “So what do you like to do?” he asked, rubbing a few thick fingers across the stubble on his chin.

  “What do you mean?” No answer. “You mean … in bed?”

  He just smiled, a vengeful smirk.

  “I’m open,” I said. “I’m in learning mode. Maybe you’ll find out soon enough if we get to know each other.”

  “We don’t need to know each other.” Right. Let’s just throw back our drinks and sneak into the bathroom so you can bang my head against a stall for thirty seconds. In theory, I had nothing against that scenario. With Ellen and Jenny waiting at the bar, the bathroom would actually feel safer than Pete’s lair, which I imagined as a bare studio apartment holding only an army cot, a mini-fridge full of Guinness, and heavy barbells. But he wasn’t going to get me that easily. He eyed me with glaring impatience.

  “I’m going to use the ladies’ room,” I said. I washed my hands, dabbed on some lip gloss, returned to the table, and remained standing. “I don’t think this will work out, Pete, but thanks for meeting.” On the way out I motioned for Ellen and Jenny to meet me at the car.

  “Oh my god, that guy was a serial killer,” Ellen said.

  “For sure,” Jenny concurred.

  * * *

  After a few more misses I came across Jonathan, a fortysomething lawyer from Silicon Valley. Slim, handsome, with tortoiseshell glasses and a stylish haircut, he had a big smile and quintessential West Coast optimism. We met at Beretta, a crowded restaurant and bar in the Mission. About an hour into the conversation, he put down his drink and asked, “So, how do you think it’s going so far?”

  “Pretty good,” I said. “Nice. What about you?”

  “I agree. The sexual chemistry isn’t readily apparent, but I suspect if we kissed, there’d be a lot of heat.”

  I wasn’t sure if that was some sort of move, but it worked. We had another drink and he walked me several blocks back to my apartment. At my door, he put his hands around my waist and kissed me skillfully, slowly exploring with his tongue. We stood there making out for a full twenty minutes until he had to run for his train, leaving me dizzy.

  On our second date the following week, he came to the studio with a little cooler of snacks: hummus, good cheese, fancy crackers. We unpacked it all in the kitchen as the sun set, poured some wine, and brought it to the living room. He was a Wim Wenders fan and because I told him I’d never seen Wings of Desire, he brought it with him. I went to the TV to insert the DVD and he was behind me, kissing my ear before the tray closed.

  We stumbled to the bed, where he turned me onto my hands and knees and fucked me from behind, first with his f
inger and then for real. He never stopped talking, and, as with Paul, the dialogue turned me on as much as the physical act. I was wet before he even touched me and matched his nasty talk word for word. And just like with Paul, I didn’t come. It usually took several tries for a new man to learn how to bring me to orgasm, and I had no idea whether any of these lovers would figure it out in the two or three encounters we shared. It didn’t even occur to me to coach Paul or Jonathan on how I liked to be touched. I was more concerned with being taken than with orgasming.

  Afterward, he sat on the couch in his briefs, opened his laptop, and started playing music, lots of New Wave stuff I’d never much gotten into—Echo and the Bunnymen, Depeche Mode, the Smiths. He asked if he could stay over. I gently said no, and he got dressed to leave, but our goodbye kiss was so hot that he unzipped his pants, fumbled for another condom, pushed me back onto the bed, and fucked me again before going.

  I felt satiated when I closed the door behind him. Lover number two. It wasn’t just the sex that delighted me. It was the food, music, conversation—the intimate glimpse into another person. Like a castaway rescued from a small island, I could finally sight the edges of the larger world as my little boat trailed along an unfamiliar coastline.

  * * *

  My job at the magazine required late nights and regular weekends, but the perks were many. On one assignment, I flew to Las Vegas and stayed overnight in a luxury hotel decked out in midcentury glamour. The bathroom was as big as a small bedroom. Every surface gleamed black, white, or pewter. On trips like these, editors were treated like VIPs: Everything was free or upgraded, and our names were always on some list that a pretty, long-legged girl was holding at the door. The party on this particular trip was held in the lobby of the hotel, where men in suits and women in heels swirled Champagne and grabbed little puff pastries circulated by tuxedoed waiters. A wide spiral staircase led underground to the darkened dance club. I made my way down and stood near the bottom of the stairs, surveying the dance floor. A lanky, dark-haired man—a boy, really—approached the stairs looking so familiar that I reflexively said “hi” as he passed. I frequently ran into acquaintances on the press-trip circuit.

  “Hi,” he responded, confused. No, I was wrong. I didn’t know him.

  Ten minutes later he returned, asking if he could get me a drink.

  “Sure,” I said. Having been monogamous my entire life, I lacked both the sultry and the icy varieties of bar demeanor apparent in the single women. My default mode was to chat away as if meeting a new friend. I was doing so when, fifteen minutes in, he took advantage of a natural pause to ask, “So, do you want to go upstairs to your room?”

  I almost glanced over my shoulder to see if he meant me. I’d never picked up a man in a bar. Moreover, I was wearing my wedding ring. I didn’t take it off during the project.

  “You realize I’m married?” I asked, stalling.

  “Yeah, I see that.”

  “Just for the record, though, I’m separated right now. Well, part-time. Never mind, it’s a long story.”

  He smiled. “I figured it was something like that.”

  “How old are you?” I ventured.

  “Twenty-three.”

  Twenty-three. Why was he pursuing a middle-aged married woman in a room full of single hotties? It must have been my scent. My pheromones overpowered theirs exponentially.

  “Okay,” I said, turning to go up the stairs. “Follow me.”

  Something about our age difference made me hesitant to have actual sex, and he didn’t push it. We made out on the king-sized bed, fully clothed. I rolled him onto his back, got on all fours astride his hips, and slowly went down on him, my default alternative to intercourse ever since high school, when I was determined to preserve my virginity with my boyfriend until graduation. I knew women who enjoyed fellatio and those who avoided it; I was in the former camp. I found penises beautiful—ordinary organs that grew into sculptures made of flesh. I took pleasure in mastering them from up close, watching them expand and harden, tracing the ridges of their warm architecture against the roof of my mouth.

  “Can I give you a tip?” he asked after we were done.

  “Okay,” I said, taken aback.

  “Near the end, when the guy is close to coming, ease up a little. It gets really sensitive then.”

  “Hmmm,” I said. “Roger that.” All those years of practice and a twenty-three-year-old just gave me blow-job advice. His words should have stung, but I only registered curiosity at his preference, and pride at my detachment. Along with my new easy assertiveness, I took this as evidence that in the two decades since I’d last dated, I’d actually grown up.

  Or had I? A pattern was emerging. I liked being on my hands and knees. My affinity for cock notwithstanding, I was quick to go down on a man with vigor but didn’t expect him to return the favor. I wasn’t sure if I was deprioritizing my own orgasm to please men or to protect myself emotionally. Did I even want to orgasm with a new man?

  I intended to find out. I was already noticing how each new encounter brought with it not merely the thrill of lust, which was vital in itself, but a whole host of questions that trailed behind it like fairy dust. I suspected they would take a while to answer.

  He got dressed and I walked him to the door. We stood facing each other for an awkward moment. He held his cell phone out.

  “You don’t have to take my number,” I said.

  “I was thinking just in case I’m in San Francisco. My brother lives up there.”

  “Okay.” I recited it to him. “Really, though, you don’t have to call.” He would in fact leave a message a few months later, which I wouldn’t return.

  I climbed back into bed and texted Scott to say goodnight, fully aware that if he weren’t waiting for me back in San Francisco, I might feel as vulnerable as any other woman who’d just gone down on a stranger instead of acting so cavalier about it. On weekdays, when we were apart, we emailed and texted but often didn’t speak at night, instinctually keeping an emotional distance from whatever the other might be doing. Part of our agreement was that we wouldn’t ask, and didn’t want to know, the details of each other’s dalliances. Cell phones provided further cover; we could check in from anywhere.

  Just texting to say goodnight, I typed to the man who never put me on my hands and knees—in the literal sense, at least.

  Scott texted back from wherever he was, Goodnight, dove.

  11

  OneTaste

  WHENEVER I MENTIONED my open marriage to anyone in San Francisco, I got one of two reactions. The first was a watered-down version of the warnings our Sacramento friends proffered. San Franciscans didn’t judge me, at least not out loud, though I could see the worry on their faces. “Sounds risky,” they’d say. Or, “You two seemed so happy.”

  The second response, usually from a woman, was quiet, wide-eyed reverence. “Wow, that’s so brave.” It surprised me. I didn’t feel brave. What I was doing felt instinctual, inevitable.

  Certainly the idea wouldn’t have gone over so well in Omaha or Baton Rouge. In San Francisco, however, polyamory wasn’t all that rare. Many of the gay men I knew, and even a few straight couples, had open relationships with their long-term partners. Half the city attended Burning Man each September and took “relationship vacations”—what happens at Burning Man stays at Burning Man. San Francisco was home to cuddle parties, group sex hangouts like the Power Exchange, weeknight happy hours at the Porn Palace, and sex therapists who called themselves surrogates and climbed into bed with their clients.

  To me, the most intriguing of these subcultures was OneTaste, a South of Market “urban commune” that focused around something called orgasmic meditation, a practice that involved quietly stroking a woman’s clitoris for fifteen minutes. An article in the weekly paper described how OneTaste’s few dozen inhabitants hooked up with relationship “research partners” for weeks or months at a time and frequently slept together in one big loft a few doors down from its cour
ses center. OneTaste’s sleek website listed several weekend courses as well as a regular Wednesday-night introductory gathering called InGroup.

  I drove over to SoMa on a Wednesday night and pulled up to OneTaste’s headquarters, a nondescript two-story building situated between a pizza parlor and a diner on a busy stretch of Folsom Street. A petite brunette behind a reception desk asked me to sign in. The center looked like a yoga studio: clean, sparse, with high ceilings and heavy wooden tables. Black-and-white photos of female nudes hung on the wall. About two dozen people milled around, ranging from their mid-twenties to their mid-forties. When I read about OneTaste I had imagined a gathering of hippies. Instead, most were clean-cut and well dressed, tapping away on smart phones and laptops.

  When it was time to begin, a man of about forty named Noah, who looked like he could have been a rabbi in another life, led us up a large staircase to the second floor. Through a thick velvet curtain was another airy studio with a couch up front facing rows of chairs arranged in a semicircle. I took a seat in the second row.

  Noah sat down on the couch next to a woman with a blond bob and a permanent smile. She wore black slacks, a black drapey top, and black stilettos. She sat with her legs spread wide, a hand resting on each knee, and announced, “I’m practicing sitting this way, with my pussy open, to see if it feels different than crossing my legs.”

  No one recoiled at the word “pussy.” Thanks to Regena, I was so used to it by then that I’d forgotten it was ever considered vulgar. We went around the room introducing ourselves, then began playing word games, finishing off sentences such as “What I’m feeling right now is ______,” “What you’d never guess about me is ______,” and “If I were a master of orgasm, I would ______.” Noah turned to the high stool perched next to the couch. “This is what we call the hot seat,” he said. “It’s exactly what it sounds like. You volunteer to sit on it and we get to ask whatever we want. You have three choices: You can tell the truth. You can lie. Or you can pass. We highly recommend telling the truth.” Noah explained that the respondent must stop talking when the questioner said “Thank you,” even in midsentence. “Who wants to start?” he asked.