Currently Reading: Want Me

BY: CELESTE

I’m obsessed with sharing books with my friends and I love hearing about what they’re reading so let’s share! I absolutely love reading and I’m trying to make it a habit to reach for a book when I want to reach for my phone. Honestly when I’m consistent, it does wonders for my mental health. 

Currently Reading: Want Me: A Sex Writer's Journey Into the Heart of Desire by Tracy Clark-Flory

After reading an excerpt in Jezebel I bought the book. It’s a quick, engaging read that raises some interesting and challenging questions about sexual desire and female sexuality. I love how candid she is about her own journey toward a more authentic sexual self and the struggles that arise, internally, externally, societally, and personally. Warning, it’s definitely explicit so if that’s not your thing, skip this one. Here’s a taste:

“Afterward, my boyfriend called me on the phone, voice vibrating with outrage. He said: “I didn’t think you were that kind of girl.”

I understood that being “that kind of girl” would mean losing him. So I said: “I didn’t want to do all of those things, it didn’t happen like I wrote it, you don’t understand, I only made it seem like I liked it, I felt pressured, it was really intense, I was just trying to get through it, I wanted to get away.”

I stopped writing in the journal after that, and I stopped trusting which story was true. Both versions were refracted through what I felt these boys wanted of me. I was fifteen years old and already losing my own perspective. All these years later, I have gotten it back: I was a girl living in a world where women’s desire is narrowed to being desired, and where physical and reputational danger lurk behind every sexual encounter. I was a girl living in a world that had granted women new liberties alongside new burdens and existing limitations.

Both stories were true; both stories were a lie.” 

If you are into this book, you might also like Three Women by Lisa Taddeo, I read it a couple of years ago and loved it!