You can’t have a real partnership without dialogue. Few people pause to consider whether they’re actually compatible with someone before starting a relationship; they just start getting fucked and think, Oh my God, this is it! But real partnership is about much more than great sex: Do you have the same desires for your lives? Where do you want to live? What do you want your life to look like? What happens if you’re the one making money? Does the other still expect you to go to the grocery store too? This isn’t rocket science. We need to deprogram ourselves from thousands of years of stereotypes, but at the same time we can’t kid ourselves about who we really are. If what you really want is to make money and have a career, you probably aren’t going to be the one cooking dinner every night. That’s where a partnership can be valuable, if you do it right.
Love Is a Crazy-Ass Blindfolded Angel with a Weapon in His Hand
Just after I had my daughter, a handsome lawyer I’d drunkenly made out with one night in the early 1990s started positioning himself to be my next boyfriend. He even sent Ava her first Christmas snowsuit. My mother could hardly believe my good fortune. Here I was, parenting a little one-year-old girl all by myself, and I had an Italian American lawyer from upstate New York—a mere fifteen miles from where I was born—lining up to marry me! He was basically my mother’s ideal son-in-law. I was forced to deliver the crushing news that, although this lawyer was amazing, cute, and all-around great, there was just one problem: I didn’t have energy with him. I didn’t want to kiss him, and I most certainly did not want to fuck him.
This is when my mom decided to do a reenactment of 1640 and insisted that “that part will come in time.” The fact that people went to bed by candlelight the last time anyone actually believed such nonsense didn’t seem to give her pause. I mean, I’m now forty-five, and I’ve still yet to meet one person who was initially turned off by her husband, but found herself fucking him like a rabbit seven years into their marriage. This is why, although the lawyer continues to be a friend of mine and I will always appreciate that he showed up to be my suitor, he now has a Russian model for his wife.
Let’s be honest. Most of the time when we fall in love with someone, it’s not because the wider world has given us any indication that their dick should be inside of us. Energy has nothing to do with what’s practical or aesthetic; it has nothing to do with his stats, his bank account, or how he looks on paper. It is not the same as attracted to or makes sense. Instead, it comes directly from the source. Most of the time when you meet someone, you’re either in or you’re out. Does he make you want to do crazy things? If he doesn’t, and you’re just trying to figure out how to keep him happy or how to leave by noon the next day, you’re a liar, not a lover, and I’m sorry to be the one to tell you that if you continue this relationship, you’re going to need a lawyer.
One of the great things about making my own money is that I’ve always been able to fuck who I wanted, not who I thought would marry me or take me shopping. Maybe it’s not good to keep bringing my daughter into the sex chapter, but I recently gave Ava her own wallet, allowance, and cash card. She’s eight; I thought it would be a good way to teach her math. After Ava made her first purchase (clothes at a store called Justice), calculating what she could afford, then counting the money out carefully, and handing it to the clerk, she was thrilled. “You know what was really good, Mommy?” she said afterwards. “I didn’t have to say thank you to anybody.”
I believe that’s how our love lives should be too. We should be with someone because we truly love them, and our soul wants us to be with them, not because they’re going to buy us a great apartment or Birkin bag. Can you even imagine having to sleep with some of those businessmen who look like they’ve been stranded in an English library since 1820? I mean, maybe some of them are smart and interesting, but I’ve seen plenty a girl out in the Hamptons who looks like she can’t wait to see her tennis instructor.
When I was younger, I passed up a possible opportunity for an assignation with Leonard Cohen, one of my favorite musicians. I was signed to Atlantic Records at the time, and one of my employees had played my album for his daughter. He’d heard my music and invited me out for coffee. I didn’t go, because I was married, and I knew I didn’t want to get coffee with Leonard; I wanted to fuck him. I mean, he is ridiculous! To this day, Leonard’s song “Hallelujah”—which has been covered by about 150 other artists, including Jeff Buckley—contains one of my favorite lines about sex, or at least how sex should be: “Remember when I moved in you / The holy dove was moving too / And every breath we drew was Hallelujah.”
If you have ever had the great privilege of crying when you make love with someone, then you will understand what it’s like to be a god, an angel, and a human being all at the same time. I have at certain times in my life cried while making love, and in those moments I’ve been delivered with my lover to places we didn’t know we were capable of going. We got there with energy and gentleness and roughness and
