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

by Glynnis MacNicol

Certainly, one of the benefits of being in your forties must be the knowledge that depending on anything external to fundamentally transform you is a fool’s errand.

I’ve come to suspect I’m some sort of proof. Proof, perhaps, that a New York Times wedding announcement does not shore up matters of life the way one was convinced it might? Though this feels too simplistic. What really irks this woman, I’ve come to realize, is that I appear to be enjoying myself. I have veered off the narrow path laid out for women to be successful in the world, and it turns out I’m fine.

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.

Five years before I can clearly see myself for what I am: powerful and alive and beautiful. Ever since, when I see a photo of myself, as much as I may be put off by it (and there is plenty to be put off by, as this recent tour through my phone has evidenced) I remind myself that in five years I will love it. But I don’t want to wait five years. I want enjoyment now.

This, more than the crush notes, more than the messages that sometimes send me back to my own body, is what I am enjoying the most. The abundance. There really is always more. I am released from the trap of gratefulness. I have been relinquished from the scarcity mind-set that drives…basically all things women, I suppose.

A friend who was doing research into the history of pornography for women once told me the reason women’s pornography is rarely successful is because the thing women fantasize about most is freedom.

I feel, for the first time in a very long time, that I am in full control of myself. I’m also vaguely aware that I have become the very thing we are taught to fear. A woman unafraid of her own desires, freed from the expectation of asking permission to satisfy them, even briefly. There’s not a shred of shame.

It’s relieved me of the idea that marriage is a conclusion, or anything but another way to live. But without outside affirmation, 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. •