I’ve been with friends all evening, dancing in bare feet to a makeshift band under a bright August moon. It’s 2021, and after more than a year of pandemic isolation, it’s pure ecstasy.
I’ve spent enough time in Paris over the years to be familiar with the reality of the city behind the postcard fantasy. But every once in a while the fantasy materializes, and tonight is one of those nights.
Finally, sometime after midnight, my friend Nina and I walk home, still swaying to the music and the rosé. When she drops me off, I tell her to text me as soon as she’s in. Upstairs I lie on the floor. Just a short time ago I’d been grinding away with a handsome young man I’d connected with in the crush of bodies. When the music ended, we’d stumbled through our goodnight, exchanging numbers before parting ways.
But now, home and alone, whatever remained of my rational brain a short while ago, the one that thought the dancing and kissing and touching was enough for a person who’d had none during the long months’ solitary lockdown, has gone silent. I don’t regret my decision not to follow him for more dancing somewhere in the 13th arrondissement, but I’m not done with the night.
I swipe through my matches on Fruitz, the absurdly named French dating app that’s popular this summer, to see if there’s potential for some fun chat. There is a slew of messages waiting for me, but I immediately realize I want more of what I’ve just had. I decide I should message my dance partner.
Even through the high of the evening, this feels a bit insane. Does one message a stranger from the dance floor? Isn’t it enough to know I could message him? I consider this for a few minutes. It is not insane. We’ve all been living in a place of balancing risk against caution for what feels like a long time, and very little feels like enough right now.
I’m in Paris for the month. A 46-year-old woman (47 in a few weeks), no partner, no children. An age and situation we are told promises little enjoyment. And yet, since re-emerging into the world, I’ve found the exact opposite to be true. And I want more.
I open WhatsApp and type: “Come over?
The worst that can happen is he says no, I think as I hit send.
The response is immediate: “Où est tu?”
I send the address before my brain has a chance to reemerge. I know what I want.
“En route. Dix minutes.”
“Bien,” I type.
Ah, the sensation of being wanted immediately. I get up to brush my teeth. My stomach is churning through the wine at the imminent reality. My phone pings again, and a bolt of worry that he’s changed his mind shoots through me – the disappointment is telling.
I’m not drunk or playing; I really do want this. But it’s not him pinging, it’s just Nina telling me she’s home. I send back three thumbs-up emojis.
When I’m done brushing, I double-check the box of condoms I brought with me are in the bedside table. Then I return to the living room and lean out the window. The streets are quiet, it’s close to 2am now. The night air is cool, and the city glows against the low clouds above.
I turn to the left and see his figure coming down the street. I watch for a minute, alert with the power that I have summoned this. I have been summoning this for months and now it’s here. I knew what I wanted and I got it. I don’t wait for him to get to the door, or even message. We’ve already done the dance. Literally. I’ve invited him here for one reason.
I take the keys, shut the door firmly behind me and hurry down the stairs, the marble cool against my bare feet, and am at the door when he arrives.
In the small time we’ve been apart I’ve already forgotten how tall he is. How broad. The strong smell of too much cologne wafts off him. He follows me up the flights of stairs, not touching me. “One more étage,” I say, thinking the stairs suddenly seem endless.
I wonder how this will go. Will it be awkward? No one has seen me naked for a long time. But when I close the door to the apartment, I simply turn to him, and smiling at one another, we immediately pick up where we left off. This time there is no sense of propriety slowing down the removal of my clothes. Which are immediately removed. By him.
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As my dress comes off, and then my bra, I consider what my nude, 46-year-old body might look like to outside eyes. It does not look like the bodies we are told should be naked. It is not a defying “can you believe it?” body. It has not fared as well as my face. It has shouldered the highs and the plunges of life, of grief, and loss, and confusion, and self-deception, and the reliable joys of food, and the months where not exercising was definitely the healthier option. It is the body of a person who can no longer skate by on no health insurance. Who must follow up on every scan. Who cannot leave home even for one night without tweezers. Who can barely conceive of wearing heels because of the pain they cause my feet.
Should I be concerned? Get under the covers first? Try to angle myself so that the fact that one breast currently points in the wrong direction thanks to last year’s biopsy is less noticeable? So that the dimples down the backs of my thighs can only be felt instead of seen? It doesn’t matter.
None of these questions need answering. The concerns disappear more quickly than they arrive. Now that I’m here, in my body and out of my head, I find I don’t care. I can’t even make myself care. I’m being carried away by all the things that get lost in a two-dimensional world where our eyes are the only way to interact with others, where all our other senses are replaced with an immediate search for “flaws”.
What gets lost in that world: the headiness of another body, the smells, the awkwardness, the vulnerability. Small puffs of air on bare skin. The presence of another person taking up space, shifting everything in the room so that it takes on a different significance: the lumpy couch now a helpful place to balance a knee on. The doorframe, a solid scaffolding to remain upright. And then, the glorious sensation of just being naked. Skin. So much skin. Hands where there haven’t been hands in who knows how long. And more skin.
More than anything I have missed the contact of skin.
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.
He steps back for a moment, dropping my bra onto the couch and removing his shirt. He takes another long look at me. Ah, the enjoyment of being enjoyed. “Amazing,” he says with a grin before coming closer. And I think, Yes. Yes. You are fortunate my clothes are off. It is amazing.
Is there a name for the male gaze being subverted by actual male gazes? No matter whose individual direct gaze we find ourselves under – how that individual might identify, how you might – we are all existing under the Male Gaze. Even when we work to live outside of it. Even to define your life as being outside of it is, itself, a recognition of what and who is inside. Who is offered the sanctuary.
This Male Gaze has so many names. Patriarchy. Women’s clothing sizes. Beauty products. Pay rates. Health care. It’s endless. To step outside of it even for a moment is to risk casting yourself into a void. Because what else is out there? It’s nearly impossible to know. And then perhaps you do anyway. Because you have to. Or maybe, as in my case, just because I can. And very briefly you find, for instance, yourself in the literal gaze of an extremely attractive young man no one has ever suggested you’d be in the gaze of again. And you are reminded, even just briefly, that it’s all a lie. For them as much as for you.
It’s in the face of this expression that I immediately remember something I’ve always known. Not learned. Known. Far from cataloguing 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. The fact I am currently being reminded of this by a 30-year-old man with bulging arms and a washboard stomach – that I need to be reminded of this by a man – feels like a somewhat problematic catch-22 that I imagine has been explored in a number of highly respected feminist books I have not read. Nor do I particularly care about in this moment.
All I want is more skin. More and more and more. More skin. More hands. More everything. And for the next five hours that is exactly what I get.
This is an edited excerpt from I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, by Glynnis MacNicol, to be published by Penguin Life on 11 June.