Getting Your Groove Back
Examples in life and art
“I’m thinking about getting back in the saddle with this guy, but I’m scared because it’s been 3 years.”
That was my friend Katie, texting me last Friday. “This is delighting me,” I replied, which was true. Love it when I get a juicy morsel like this.
She wanted to clarify the locus of her nerves though. Explain where she was confident and where she wasn’t. “I’m a Scorpio, I’ll rock his world,” she said, and I quickly hearted that one, because yay to being freaky and liberated. Then:
“I am legit nervous though about being seen naked.”
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Have I ever mentioned that cockiness + vulnerability = my favorite personality combo? It’s one of the reasons I adore Katie, always pinging around between jokes and raw truth. But to fully get that text, there is context, and this is it:
In 2019, Katie was diagnosed with breast cancer. It was caught in time, and as these things go, that’s very good news. Katie got out of it without dying. Good news, she kept her life, good news, I got to keep enjoying her cocky/nervous thing, good news, we all went to the hospital after her last treatment with posters while Katie wore a STRAIGHT OUTTA CHEMO shirt. She was bald and defiant. I still have photos from that day.
But the bad news. The bad news is that the requisite buffet of modern cancer treatment killed off other things. Her energy first. Then her sex drive, then one of her breasts. Katie had a partner at the time, and I think she was grateful for him, until she wasn’t. That’s because he needed a lot of care too, but not because he was sick. He simply wanted…what did he want? I think someone more domestic. More at-home. More happy to watch TV on the couch, have a beer, have sex, go to sleep. And I don’t blame him for wanting those things, but bless his heart, that isn’t Katie.
Cancer clarified Katie’s insides, while it changed her outsides. As she came out of cancer treatment, then Covid lockdowns (fuck all with that timing), she stopped drinking. She broke up with that guy and went to movies on her own. She got a tiny dog that she dressed in Eileen Fisher-esque sweaters, she resumed her wanderlust, she grew out her dark hair short with gray streaks. In my eyes, she became the hottest she’d ever been; more than once I left a drooling emoji on her red lipstick Insta selfies. She got reconstructive surgery and a new life credo, something like – “I’m going to listen to myself from now on.” And she did.
Cancer also prompted an early menopause. While I was getting a job at a sex podcast in 2021, quickly becoming a vocally annoying sex nerd to my friends and family, Katie was laughing, saying – “that’s so funny, I just don’t think about that stuff at all anymore.”
Funny, right.
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I love a good sex reclamation story, whether it’s the story of an ambitious go-getter who succumbs to the charms of a playful lover (Crazy, Stupid, Love), a hapless late-in-life sexual bloomer finally getting the girl (The 40-Year-Old Virgin), a single mom letting it all go in Jamaica (How Stella Got Her Groove Back). Similar to Katie, Stella also has a cancer thread. I have noticed it’s a fairly common plot device.
“But…cancer’s not sexy,” I hear someone say. Ok, maybe not. Sex is life-affirming though, a fuck-you of sorts to mortality. It’s all about the body, an exoneration of our skin and our nerve endings, stitched together for a shockingly short amount of time. One day, all of us will have to let this haunted skin go. You, me, Stella, Katie.
So yes, the threat of death and the joy of sex go together in lots of stories. Here are two of my current favorites.
This is a podcast that came out in 2020, but I’m just now discovering it. Thanks algorithm.
Nikki Boyer is the host and creator, and every episode is a conversation with her best friend Molly, who…has terminal cancer. And that’s sad, of course it is, but the premise of the show isn’t sad at all. Instead, it’s all about Molly’s sexual awakening after she gets diagnosed, beginning with sexy selfies, then turning into sexts with strangers, then IRL dates so hilarious they warrant their own sitcom. Which is happening!
With a fucking GREAT cast, too. Jenny Slate, Rob Delaney, Jay Duplass, Michelle Williams. It’s as if this show consulted me personally because I love all these people. I got tears in my eyes reading the Variety piece about it just now, and can’t wait to watch when it comes out.
I highly recommend the podcast (yes I sent it to Katie), because no matter your relationship to cancer or sex, it’s just a very entertaining series. I think my favorite part about it is how much Nikki and Molly love each other; they do dramatic readings of their own texts – including things like Molly being in the hospital again because one of her lungs failed – and always dissolve into hysterics while reading them. They are so adorable.
Good Luck To You, Leo Grande
This is a 2022 movie my friend Amy told me about, with a 3-word review: “you’ll love it.” Folks, she was right.
Good Luck To You, Leo Grande could almost be a play, as Amy pointed out – no fancy set, no effects, just great writing and sparky dialogue. It’s a 2-person cast with the wonderful Emma Thompson (playing Nancy Stokes) and the aggressively green-eyed Daryl McCormack (playing Leo Grande); the entire movie mostly takes place in a single room.
Emma is a boomer and recent-ish widower who’s never had satisfying sex. Or, an orgasm. When we meet her, she’s in a hotel room dressed in her teachercore finest, all sensible low heels and knee-length skirt. She’s flustered, because she’s booked a room for herself and a hot young sex worker…Leo Grande.
At the moment, we are all trying to figure out what masculinity we’re in the mood for. In 2024 alone: Jeremy Allen White’s dopey-hotness towering over Times Square; world-famous boyfriend Travis Kelce bitching out his coach at the Super Bowl; Usher peak-Ushering smooth seduction at the same event; the Golden Bachelor’s mere existence but more significantly announcing a calm and consensual divorce three months into the marriage; for whatever reason my Instagram “For You” keeps pushing me AI-altered memes of a jacked-up David Schwimmer whose most famous show I never watched; Pedro Pascal’s rascally Daddy energy floats through the void. It’s a confusing time for male appeal.
Enter Leo Grande. It’s not just that he’s hot. His emotional intelligence is the thing that feels zeitgeisty. He’s the kind of man that turns you on because he feels so safe, and to American female viewers accustomed to opening their phones and surveying the fresh reproductive rights horrors of the day, well, Leo quenches a particular kind of thirst. A man who celebrates your right to pleasure, in whatever form that may take. “Maybe you just want to talk?” he asks Nancy at one point. Maybe she does.
But Nancy wants other things too. She just isn’t sure how to access them. An orgasm for one, but also to feel sexual and wanted in her aging body. Emma Thompson plays that up, frequently trying to tease out some ageism from Leo, but remember – her husband has just died. We don’t know the cause, we just know it was sudden. So the specter of death gives these meetings an urgency, a checklist Nancy has to get through before she dies, too. She wants to try blowjobs, for example.
They’re on her literal checklist.
I’ve got some fun Q&A’s coming up on Submit Here that I’m excited to share with you. They include:
Non-monogamous mom
, who describes her family as a family of five: four adults, one childA friend of mine who was raised in small town Montana by non-monogamous parents
Brian Gibney, a professional partner surrogate living in the South. If you don’t know what partner surrogacy is, read my upcoming chat with Brian! I find this topic fascinating and plan to do a deep dive.
Thanks so much for reading! Leave a comment below and let’s chat.
Another great one, Tolly! Lines I loved:
- Cancer clarified Katie’s insides, while it changed her outsides.
- One day, all of us will have to let this haunted skin go.
This woman sounds incredible. Really enjoyed reading this. xx