I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman's Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris

by Glynnis MacNicol

But looking to a city, or a dress, or a meal, or a person to throw a different light on things? To raise you up slightly from where you are and place you gently down a little way away so that everything looks familiar but perhaps a little taller? A little softer? A little stronger? More enjoyable? That’s just good decision-making.

What no one prepares you for as a woman is for everything to go right. When you are a woman alone, this is never even

suggested as a possibility.

Recent years spent dissecting how we’ve internalized the lethal legacy of the patriarchy does not keep me from being made to feel safe by this.

Who could release me, even briefly, from being all the people I need to

When in fact, the uniqueness, if it can be called that, was simply in the telling, not the living.

I chose the city instead.

went, on foot, and on my bike, taking it all in, trying to somehow pin it down with my presence so it wouldn’t disappear entirely.

One of the unexpected realizations to come out of my forties is that being human is often largely ridiculous. This, and that how we experience romance at age fifteen is more or less the same as romance at eighty-five.

Actual maturity, I’ve come to suspect, is largely just succeeding at not letting the injuries of your childhood debilitate you, which is the great challenge of life. As

We’re all mostly just sending the same messages back and forth to each other from puberty to death, the only difference as we go (hopefully) being that we do so with a better understanding of what we want, what we need, and the ability to ask for it directly and walk away from it more quickly when it doesn’t serve us.

A bike pass, in any city, seems like a measure of a life well lived.

It’s only in the past few months, as I find myself holding conversations about weather, and shopping, and my niece and nephews to whom this package is addressed, that I understand all this small talk as a symptom of loneliness and am able to recognize the shape of my mother’s isolation.

But what is the life of a nonperson in the eyes of the law?

It was then I realized, no amount of paper can replace the deep confidence that comes from a lifetime of being given the benefit of the doubt.

So far, aging often feels like an exercise in gaslighting. You might feel great. You might look great. And yet everyone and everything is telling you it’s terrible. It’s all terrible.

find that sometimes the easiest way to stick to your own experience of your life is, sadly, to stay quiet about it. Slide invisibly through the world doing exactly what you want.

Bad things happen to women because of something they’ve done, good things happen to us out of luck.

The older I get, the better I know myself, the less distance I must travel to figure out whether to include someone in my life. The closer I am to me, the closer I am to other people (and conversely, the less time I need to figure out whether to keep them at arm’s length).

It has little to do with growing away from the things that bring us pleasure or joy or just silly fun. It most often just means kindness. Knowing how to give it, to ourselves and others, and also receive it.

I look up to see him staring at me and I catch that look on his face, the look we are relentlessly told is reserved only for the rarified who have followed the proper regime. Applied

the toners and moisturizers and serums in the correct order. Lifted the right amount of weights. Done cardio for the correct amount of time. Excluded the right amount of sugar or fats or meats. Followed each set of new rules as they appear. Restricted themselves. Contorted themselves. Done the work. Remained young. It is the look of a man gazing upon a naked female body they have been invited to partake in. A mix of lust, excitement, gratitude, and relief.

Far from cataloging the state of your breasts, or your hips, or your tummy, men are mostly just thrilled you’ve taken off your clothes at all. Women’s bodies are beautiful. Truly. All of them.

The amount of energy that has gone into convincing us otherwise is extraordinary and telling.

Phryne’s real purpose, of course, is to live well, and love well, and do exactly what she pleases.

And yet, we know these other women—the passionate middle-age Wharton; the elder Colette in her prime; Beauvoir and her young lover—only as prickly iconoclasts. Isolated from each other, a story unto themselves, and therefore hard to repeat or have commonality with in any way. I have to search them out and be surprised each time when I find in them some shard of my own reflection.

He remains dazzled—something that continues to give me a jolt so ingrained is the habit of only seeing my own physical flaws.

If there have been any lessons I’ve taken from aging, or taken from so much solitude, or from months of people posting photos of themselves on beaches and in country houses, it’s that it’s not actually all that difficult to be kind.

It is only when thoughts like these fly through my head that I finally feel my age. Complaining that someone didn’t earn their dues? In a world that is finally full of a whole array of voices? Good god.

The way that the internet has robbed her of discovery. Of being allowed to not know, to have to find out on your own. The understanding of self being the result of the work of acquiring that knowledge. Instead, she has been raised in a funhouse, with every version of what life could look like reflected back to her.

The concept of boundaries seems to have gone into overdrive to balance out all the connecting.

Will we ever again understand pleasure as an experience that doesn’t require an audience to be true? I wonder.

Instead of traveling time, we are required to battle it—or the appearance of it—with all our expendable income, never to enjoy it.

Movement is only enjoyable when it’s a choice. Bookended by places of respite and permanence.

I’m still left with the responsibility of having to trust that simply feeling enjoyment is evidence enough that where I am and what I’m doing is good and true and worthwhile.

We always want to exchange our aliveness for perfection.

I continue following the signs for the Mona Lisa, this woman of mystery renowned for being still and impenetrable and silent. Three things I hope never to be.

I am always wary of advice given by men who’ve spent most of their lives doing what they please, and then, when it suits them, discover the joys of family or comradery.

I sometimes have to work to understand my life not as one long missed opportunity.

I find myself coveting myself. And then I remind myself, I will covet this self too.

Some part of me hopes to be seen out here by someone on the beach, if only to be carried away in their minds as a small example of possibility.

So much past experience remains a present truth for so many of us, even when the present contradicts it at every turn.