Thanks to my dear friends Susan Jarolim, Val Pfahning, and Amy McCall for your continual support and sisterhood in all things. Likewise Stacey Cooper and Maria Torre.
I owe a huge thanks to my family for their unconditional love, and a special debt to my parents for bearing with my telling of some of our most painful moments.
Thank you, Mary Karr, for mercilessly chopping up the first chapter. In fact, thank you to every female writer—and every feminist—who’s ever lived.
I deeply thank every teacher, friend, and former lover who appears in this book for what we’ve shared and what each has taught me. I honor all of it.
A Note About the Author
Robin Rinaldi has worked for newspapers and magazines for seventeen years. She has been the executive editor of 7x7, a San Francisco lifestyle magazine, and written an award-winning food column for Philadelphia Weekly. Her writing has appeared in The New York Times and O, The Oprah Magazine, among other publications. She lives in Los Angeles. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Author’s Note
PART ONE: DEATH OF THE GOOD GIRL
1. The Threshold
2. Refugee (Sacramento)
3. The Leap
4. Wife (Philadelphia)
5. The Return
6. Madonna (San Francisco)
7. The Epiphany
8. Whore
PART TWO: THE WILD OATS PROJECT
9. Mission Dolores
10. Nerve
11. OneTaste
12. Eight Days
13. Glory Road
14. The Writer
15. Sanchez Street
16. South of Market
17. Solitude in Motion
18. Orgasmic Meditation
19. Yin and Yang
20. Golden Gate
21. The Women’s Circle
22. The Commune
23. Infinite Games
24. Girl on Girl on Boy
25. The Other Woman
26. The End of the Bucket List
PART THREE: HOUSE OF SHADOW AND DESIRE
27. The Crash
28. The Aftermath
29. The Broken Heart
30. The Message
31. The Master of Polarity
32. The Brutal, Slippery Truth
33. The Crossroads
34. The New Year
Acknowledgments
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Sarah Crichton Books
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2015 by Robin Rinaldi
All rights reserved
First edition, 2015
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Rinaldi, Robin.
The Wild Oats project: one woman’s midlife quest for passion at any cost / Robin Rinaldi.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-374-29021-4 (hardback) — ISBN 978-0-374-71081-1 (e-book)
1. Women—Sexual behavior. 2. Middle-aged women. 3. Open marriage. 4. Midlife crisis. I. Title.
HQ29 .R56 2015
306.7082—dc23
2014029303
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The Wild Oats Project: One Woman's Midlife Quest for Passion at Any Cost Page 26