Three Women

We pretend to want things we don’t want so nobody can see us not getting what we need

sometimes we worry so much about what frightens us that we wait to have an orgasm until we are alone

it’s women, in many of the stories I’ve heard, who have greater hold over other women than men have. We can make each other feel dowdy, whorish, unclean, unloved, not beautiful. In the end, it all comes down to fear

I think about how much I have wanted from men. How much of that wanting was what I wanted from myself, from other women, even; how much of what I thought I wanted from a lover came from what I needed from my own mother.

One inheritance of living under the male gaze for centuries is that heterosexual women often look at other women the way a man would.

Some people, Maggie thinks, live their lives as if they are sure they’re going to get another one. One more chance to be cool and popular or smart and rich and have a lot of sex. They act as though it’s okay to hang back on this one, and merely watch it like a movie.

It’s a sad feeling when an obsession becomes slightly less obsessive. It’s as though she realizes she doesn’t have it in her to die for her own heart

Like any young girl who has a crush on someone older, she doesn’t know what she wants to happen. She doesn’t know if she wants sex or no sex or to undress in her room while he watches from the sidewalk. Mostly she just wants a small suggestion of excitement. An anonymous bouquet left on a doorstep

. On the other hand, she knows what he means. He means, Don’t make me do this, why are we doing this, we can’t do this, I love my wife, my kids. But she feels, already, his hands down her pants

. Nobody on this whole earth has ever been happier. I feel I could explode from the second I wake up. I am so happy I could die. I finally know what it means when people say that. I could die