Читать книгу The Cows: The bold, brilliant and hilarious Sunday Times Top Ten bestseller - Dawn O’Porter - Страница 16

Lying on her bed, Cam watches Mark sleeping, his hairless body glistening with post-sex sweat, his muscles like a mountainous desert of smooth, sweeping vales, orange from the glow of streetlights flooding the room. He is the perfect lover. The kind of lover authors give to rejected housewives in filthy novels. He’s perfect for what Cam needs right now.

She wonders if she should kiss him gently as he sleeps, but reminds herself of the boundaries of such relationships. Sex should be tackled with abandon; affection should be handled with care.

Instead, she reaches for her computer. Having a younger lover is the kind of blog fodder she can’t deny herself.

The mid-to-late twenties, it’s such a prime age for a guy, don’t you think? Post-teenage disaster, pre-any desire to sow their seed and have children. Often at the peak of fitness, finding their way in the professional world and working their way through women like a snow plough with a penis.

I love them. For women like me, dare I tell you again – thirty-six, single, happy – they really are quite the gift. I recently found myself one whilst queuing in Whole Foods. I was buying organic frozen pizza and he was buying protein shakes. Our eyes met, we made general chit chat and an hour and a half later we were in bed. It wasn’t our stilted conversation that pulled us together, it was lust. Just lust. If you judge me for that, then I don’t think you understand how mutual adult relationships work. It’s healthy and consensual; there really is nothing to have an opinion about.

But we love it, don’t we? Judging other people’s sexual choices, especially if they have an air of controversy. We laugh, we question, we put on our halos and tell anyone doing anything we don’t do ourselves that they’re wrong or weird. But really, if it feels good and everyone is happy (and legal), then who is anyone to say it isn’t right?

How is it that such a private and intimate act, like sex, gains so much social traction? It excites people in the physical sense, but it excites them even more when they can gossip about someone else’s deviances. It makes no sense when society is as diverse as it is, that some still feel uncomfortable when others don’t behave in a way that is considered ‘normal’.

But we were just told what was normal, weren’t we? It was written in the books before we were born, that monogamy was the way to go, that we are supposed to find ‘the one’, get married, have kids. But maybe monogamy isn’t for everyone. Maybe some people, like me, really don’t have any fear of being alone. In fact, it’s the end goal.

I’m so happy not to be normal. At thirty-six, I have no intentions to settle down. There are some people in my life that find that unbearable. I can’t be any other way.

There are more single women in their thirties and forties than any other point in history; we are the fastest-growing demographic, but being single doesn’t mean you want, or deserve less sex. My choice is to have a younger lover, to give me the physical attention that I crave, but the emotional freedom that I rely on. That’s my choice, and as I sit here looking at a beautiful creature, asleep in my bed, here when I need him, gone when I don’t, I feel proud not to be normal. In fact, I recommend it.

Sweet dreams,

Cam x