Two weeks ago we were lucky enough to be asked by our dear friend, Emme Witt-Eden (known to many of you as “Mysterious Witt”), if we would read and review her newly published memoir: Confessions of a Middle-Aged F-Girl. We said “YES!” very enthusiastically.
We weren’t disappointed. The book was a pleasure to read. It was a page turner and the short chapters were bite-sized but delicious! We each devoured it and then, when we got together to discuss the review, we devoured each other!
Here is the review of the book. In the next post we’ll have an exclusive interview with the author!
Promo for Confessions of a Middle-Aged F-Girl
Fuck Eat, Pray, Love. Read Confessions of a Middle-Aged F-Girl instead. There’s more sex, more insight, and it’s better written. Oh, and there’s also more sex. Did I mention that?
Emme Witt-Eden’s Confessions takes you, the reader, on a journey from her midlife, middle-class, middling marriage to her terrific, if tormented, sexcapades of self-sexploration.
After Emme’s husband confesses to having a string of affairs, facilitated by Ashley Madison, Emme decides it’s high time to declare the time of death on her nearly non-existent sex life and venture out into the world of L.A. dating.
Emme first browses the Casual Encounters page of Craigslist (the story begins over a decade ago) to find her next cock to conquer. After a few revelatory romps in the sack, she then transforms into a “Middle-Aged Fuck-Girl.” Emme prefaces the book with six “definitions” of a fuckgirl. I have always thought of a fuckgirl as a modern take on the Manic Pixie Dream Girl, but one who doesn’t just flit about like Holly Golightly, but also gets down and dirty, living up to the updated title. (Although, to be fair, Holly Golightly was a prostitute, or, as Truman Capote said, a New York City “geisha.”)
If I am correct in this comparison between f-girls and MPDGs, then it may be that Emme is neither, for another defining characteristic of both is an almost complete lack of inner depth, subjectivity, and interiority, as well as a compulsion to define oneself as simply and merely the romantic interest (some may say ‘play-thing’) of a man. Any man. All men.
By contrast, the defining characteristic of this memoir (as it should be for any memoir) is Emme’s self-reflection (in some passages, literally), her sense of inner growth and turmoil, and quite poignantly, her feelings of responsibility to her children, guilt and remorse about her failed marriage, and longing to find herself.
This travelogue to the depths of Emme’s soul and the bedrooms of single and married men around L.A. is told through a crisp narrator who uses some beautiful metaphors. Reflecting on her insecurity about entering the dating world as a forty-year-old single mom of two, Emme says, “If my new boat was bogged down with my issues, I decided sex would be my life raft.”
The overarching “issue” is Emme’s reeling in pain from the shock of her husband’s prolific infidelity and, even more than this, his ability to deceive Emme for so many years into thinking that he just wasn’t interested in sex. As it turned out, he was interested in sex, just not with her (until she throws him out, that is).
Consciously or unconsciously, or maybe unconsciously until, in the process of writing it became conscious, Emme’s promiscuity was a way of taking revenge on her philandering husband David, as well as feeling her own feminine power. Emme’s vagina becomes both the site of her emotional charging station – “With each thrust of Kent’s cock, he pushed life back into me.” – and a symbolic scar – “his actions were akin to a knife reopening the wound left by David’s betrayal.”
With each new partner, Emme learns something about herself. When one of her paramours wishes to photograph her nude, she says, “Undressing in front of Russell felt like shedding not just clothes, but also the roles I had been trapped in for years. It was as if with each piece of fabric that fell away, I was peeling back layers of the persona I had created alongside David – and identity that had never truly aligned with who I was.”
The newly single-and-ready-to-mingle Emme is eager to shed her partnered persona. “Wife. Mother. These titles clung to me like a suffocating cloak, concealing the essence of the woman I truly was.”
Finding the woman she truly was involved feeling sexy, desired, and often high on orgasm induced oxytocin, serotonin, and dopamine. The transformation was palpable, including by her children, one of whom remarked that she seemed “80% nicer” than she was when with her husband.
But the path to putting her past behind her wasn’t as easy as she was. It involved some bad dates, some duds, some “blue labia,” and sometimes simply the blues. Emme is not only a complex and likable narrator, she, unlike Elizabeth Gilbert, is concerned about others. She is put off by men who are self-absorbed, self-centered, and worst of all, sexually selfish. She connects with others who, like herself, are able to give-and-take in both conversation and bed.
Realizing that some men just didn’t feel it necessary to reciprocate pleasure, or were too lazy to do so, she begins carrying a “pocket rocket” with her on dates. Her breaking the fourth wall narration is endearing, as when she explains, “I get it – this might sound illogical. Hear me out on this one. If I wanted to make sure I had an orgasm on every date – and I wanted to have one with a man – if he couldn’t handle that, I could speed things along with a vibe. If I always had a vibrating friend on hand when I ended up in bed with these guys, I would always be guaranteed an orgasm.”
She’s also very funny when she tosses caution to the wind and upgrades to carrying with her a very large, bulky, and heavy Hitachi Magic Wand in a backpack when she goes on dates. Can’t say I blame her. It gets the job done in a jiffy! And it can double as a serious weapon in a pinch!
In addition to most of Emme’s epiphanies occurring in various bedrooms around L.A., rather than having to travel to distant lands, as Gilbert did, Emme also stands leagues apart from Gilbert in her care of and for others, particularly her children. And, in a way that characterizes Emme’s humanity and humility in ways easily distinguished from Gilbert, Emme is not beyond self-reproach and self-doubt. As she muses:
I feared their [bad] behavior was actually my fault. It was my fault for letting them eat donuts so close to dinner. It was my fault that I buckled to their donut demands in the first place. It was my fault that I was in love with Zachary. It was my fault that he was gone.
And it was my fault that David and I couldn’t make our marriage work. It was my fault he cheated on me. I had withheld sex, so he found other covert lovers. His cheating was totally understandable. I was to blame.
And now my new lover had dumped me because I wouldn’t show my face in a ‘Casual Encounters’ ad.
I was to blame for everything.
No, this is not sexy. This is not MPDG material. This is not fuck-girl fun. But it is real. And deep. And it shows the fear we all feel at one time or another.
At one point, Emme describes the blissful pain of her pussy after a night of little sleep and lots of big dick pile driving with a guy named Bryce. She compares the bush beating discomfort to the euphoric feeling of being sore the day after a good workout. No pain, no gain. The same could be said for Emme’s overall experience as recalled in this memoir. She gained wisdom, but it came with pain. And she came, again, and again, and again.
As Emme Witt-Eden’s online moniker, “mysterious witt,” suggests, she’s a woman of mystery and wit, but also of indomitable spirit and juicy womanly bits. My only regret of this memoir is where it ends. But, it gives me hope that we can expect a sequel describing how this mid-forties f-girl and MILF gets herself into being a dominatrix. Emme, your readers want more! I hope you won’t leave us longing for a second like some of your lovers left you titillated but not satiated. Perhaps the name of her next memoir will be Fuck, Eat, Pray, Love!
A little cross-endorsement from Emme Witt-Eden
