Kerry Cohen: Loose Girl: A Memoir of Promiscuity

“Thank you,” I say. “The dress is perfect.”

“It’s a beautiful dress.” She tears up. “I’m so glad you’re allowing me to share this special time with you.”

Her divorce is still fresh. This can’t be easy for her. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I know the timing isn’t great.”

“Yes, it is.” She carefully wipes at a tear, not wanting to mess up her makeup. “We could all use a celebration.”

I smile. I get it. This is her way of being genuinely happy for me. At the wedding, she stands tall, her lips pursed. She finds a way to slip into her conversations that she’s a doctor even when nobody’s asked. She’s horrified when Michael’s and my friends call her Mrs. Cohen instead of the name she changed it to after the divorce, and instead of Doctor. This is hard for her, watching me move on, seeing my father with his girlfriend. Dad small-talks with her. He’s jokey and fun, but also uncomfortable. Really, he’s no different from the way he was when they were together.

“This is a great guy,” Dad said on the phone soon after meeting Michael.

“I know,” I said.

“He’s thoughtful and considerate. What happened?”

“Ha ha,” I said, but really I was annoyed. Did he think I wasn’t worthy of someone like Michael?

“I’m just happy you found him,” Dad said. “Now don’t screw it up.”

I had hung up feeling hurt, feeling old familiar things I had hoped I was done with. But seeing him at the wedding, seeing him scramble to make everyone happy, so insecure around my mother, I hear his words differently. He meant, “Don’t wind up like me.”

Not long after the wedding, I go out with a few friends to watch a band. I sip at my wine and laugh with the friends. A boy in a booth on the other side of the bar catches my eye. Big eyes, long brown hair. He smiles at me, and I smile back. The band goes away, and so do my friends. I’m back there, the yearning, the hoping. Just me, my body, and this boy. After an hour, I decide I’d best leave. I stand to go, and I see him stand too. I make my way to the door, but he catches up to me.

“Hey,” he says. “I’m Mark.” He touches my arm, and my face grows hot. What have I done?

I bite my lip, embarrassed.

“We were watching each other, am I right?”

I grimace. “I’m sorry,” I say. “I’m married.”

Confusion crosses his face. And maybe a hint of rejection. “Oh.”

“I’m sorry,” I say again.

I get out of there fast.

At home, I change into pajamas and brush my teeth. Michael’s already asleep, so I tiptoe into the room. For a moment I just watch him sleeping. I’m scared. I can admit that. I’m really, truly scared. I think of his words. We’ll be fine. But now I’m not so sure. Maybe he doesn’t get it. Maybe he thinks I’m not going to struggle anymore just because we’re together. Or maybe he just plumb trusts me, which frightens me even more. I can’t hurt him, not this time. Not when I’ve finally figured out how to accept being loved. I climb into bed, and half-asleep he rolls toward me. He slips an arm around my middle and nuzzles his face into my neck. I close my eyes and listen to him breathing. How lovely that sound is. Maybe, I think, I don’t have to be great at this; maybe I just have to be good enough.

Because this book was an effort that spanned a full decade, the people I have to thank for its creation are almost innumerable. But I will do my best.

The seed for Loose Girl began in 1996, long before I had lived out its last page. My teachers at the time, especially Garrett Hongo, Ehud Havazelet, and Chang-rae Lee, offered the encouragement, guidance, and intellectual understanding of my work to carry with me long after I left their classrooms. Sally Tisdale saw a very early draft of the first chapter at a workshop and said simply, “Keep writing.” Patricia Benesh and Rebecca Grabill offered generous, thoughtful direction and critique as first readers of the book. These gifted writers and mentors could not have known how much their words riveted, inspired, and challenged me.

The work of Naomi Wolf, Susan Bordo, Judith Butler, Audre Lorde, Mary Pipher, Lyn Mikel Brown and Carol Gilligan, Joan Jacobs Brumberg, and Ariel Levy helped me think through the problem I was trying to pinpoint in my story. Likewise, Marya Hornbacher’s Wasted, Elizabeth Wurtzel’s Prozac Nation, Lucy Grealy’s Autobiography of a Face, and Koren Zailckas’s Smashed set a precedent for the kind of story I wanted to tell and inspired me to keep pushing myself to do so. My agent, Ethan Ellenberg, kindly warned me about the repercussions of exposing myself with such a personal story. Only a person thinking above all else about my happiness would even consider this, and Ethan has showed himself to be that person again and again. I also owe Ethan tremendous gratitude for getting the book into Brenda Copeland’s hands. Brenda loved, nurtured, and understood my story as though it were her own child. After nailing a particularly difficult scene together, Brenda wrote me, “Truly, this is why I love my job. Moments like these.” What more could an author want in her editor? Brilliance? Vision? Well, she has those, too. Thanks to all the wonderful people at Hyperion—particularly Kathleen Carr, Rachelle Mandik, Robert S. Miller, Michelle Ishay, Navorn Johnson, Allison McGeehon, and Ellen Archer—who have cared enough about this book to tend to it and me with care. Thanks, as well, to Charlotte Cole at Ebury Press in the UK for her support and good work, and for kindly answering all my obnoxious questions. Thanks to Terri Brooks-Hernandez, Bevin Cahill, and my many other supportive and loving friends throughout the years. Tommy Mang, my first and only best friend-boy, I owe you much and miss you. Thanks also to Nadine Hamester who cared for my boys while I wrote. And to N.L., who remains in my heart, and to C. Thanks to the many girls who shared their stories with me over the years. I hope my words then and now have made them and so many others like them feel less alone.

Tremendous gratitude to my father and mother, and to S.B. who made me feel loved when I most needed it. I hope my late grandparents know how much their generosity and kindness sustained and encouraged me. Thank you, Tyler Cohen, my fellow survivor, for never faltering in your love for me.

Thanks to Cat Power, Richard Buckner, Uncle Tupelo, Josh Ritter, Wilco, and Gillian Welch, who provided me with the mood for my story. And since I’m thanking people here, thanks for the likes of Adrian Grenier, Leonardo DiCaprio, Emile Hirsch, Matt Dillon, and Jemaine Clement of the Flight of the Conchords. I may be married now, but I’m not dead.

Love and gratitude to Michael, who has been a support and a friend in more ways than I can list here. Most of all, I thank Ezra and Griffin, who inspired me to write constantly since their births, who have taught me to love fully and with my whole self, and who I hope will forgive me someday for writing a book for all their friends to read about their mother’s sex life.

Kerry Cohen is a psychotherapist who works with teens and their families. She received her MFA in creative writing from the University of Oregon and an MA in counseling psychology. A mother of two, she is a native of New Jersey but makes her home in Portland, Oregon.

Design by Victoria Hartman

LOOSE GIRL. Copyright © 2008 by Kerry Cohen. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of Hyperion e-books.