The Empress Book Club: I'm Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself. The Meet-Cute... 😂
In which we meet Glynnis, Cedric-the-exterminator, and her Paris friends!
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Fellow Empresses, How the hell are you?
This week, we’re doing a swift, deep dive into Glynnis MacNicol’s I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, Chapters 1-5. I don’t know about you, but I think women in midlife deserve far better narratives when it comes to sex, pleasure, and intimacy.
In the opening chapters of her book, MacNicol sets up what led to her Paris journey—namely, the extreme solitude of the Pandemic, during which no one touched her in over fourteen months. She also recounts how Hollywood dev execs tried to develop a show based on her previous memoir, No One Tells You This, but decided a single, childless-by-choice, midlife female’s narrative wasn’t worth representing unless the inciting incident of the story led to a spectacularly expected payoff like big love, or a big job or a beyond-noble cause, something to keep us all on the hook and watching. MacNicol never cracked the code for that adaptation. Hence, the single, childless-by-choice, midlife woman’s story has remained, in her view, largely untold.
I’m not sure this is entirely the case, however. In the 1970s, Hollywood dev execs found themselves in the same conunudrum with The Mary Tyle Moore Show—they were wildly uncomfortable with a woman living on her own, without children, a woman who was open, but not necessarily desperate to find a husband.
Network execs often fretted; if not a fiancé, they wanted Mary to have a steady beau, but all this dating around and hat tossing? It made them dyspeptic.
The show’s producers said no way.
For Hollywood to suggest that a single, midlife, childless-by-choice woman has no narrative arc, which we all know is one hundred kajillion percent not true, feels like it could be the inciting incident for a book like this, but MacNicol doesn’t let us see this particular Hollywood showdown.
The conceit of MacNicol’s book is that a woman’s pleasure can serve as its own worthy narrative arc. After all, there’s a whole lot more to us than the socially scripted heteronormative, patriarchal path. However, the inciting incident for this book doesn’t happen until after the Pandemic lockdown, and it’s a slow boil. After MacNicol is trapped alone in her tiny New York City studio apartment and cut off from being touched by anyone, she hatches her plot for Paris.
And while MacNicol is very open about her sexuality from the get-go (she’s been with both women and men throughout her life), we never see her loneliness or her desire crescendo into a defining moment where her vibrator melts in the dishwasher and she realizes right then and there that she needs a shame-free sexbatical in Paris. That we don’t see any of this, feels like a missed opportunity.
She touches on the loneliness of seeing 300 apartments clearing out in her building and Cedric-the-exterminator—the only man she has seen in close proximity for a year—warning her about mice, waterbugs, and rats. But at no point, do we experience her physical anguish at not being touched. We don’t see her decompensating from such grief. I found myself wanting to ask her: Did you ever get so painfully lonely that you considered breaking the lockdown rules? What were the consequences—apart from dying?
Did you ever get so lonely that you considered Cedric for a shag? Even for a moment?
She talks about meeting up with friends in New York City who, because of being cooped up in such confined spaces for long periods with their families, confess they loathed their loved ones. And I wondered at her interiority in this moment. Does she feel slightly smug? Or is it pure empathy for her friend? Does her own longing for contact ever make her wobble over her choices and wish for annoying roomies? Did she envy them calling the New York Times Primal Scream Line? Had she called herself? But for different reasons?
As we fast forward to her touching down in Paris, things feel almost too lucky. Too easy. I think this is the issue for me.
For a story to work, the heart must always be in conflict with itself.
MacNicol has to want to go to Paris, but something deep in her own heart has to also be holding her back or causing her to question the journey. That doesn’t happen here. There are no second thoughts. No misgivings. And we haven’t felt the torment of her loneliness, so we’re not yet rooting for her.
Even more curiously, MacNicol talks about the women who usually don’t like her. She observes that the women are typically 10-20 years older than she is (46) and they have largely followed a heteronormative, patriarchal path. She is all but certain that they feel her life choices and her happiness about them serve as an indictment of their own.
But calling out these women as combatants (women who may very well be potential readers) seems odd to me. You certainly don’t want to pander to them, but isn’t all midlife women’s pleasure, partnered or not, worth exploring? I don’t think there should be exclusions or a ‘sell-by’ date.
Here again, MacNicol’s detached nature makes it hard to root for her, and you so want to root for your main character—regardless of whether it’s a memoir, novel, or show.
So, there’s a vague call to adventure… but real no resistance or conflict about that call.
The biggest story obstacle occurs as she sits in the Jardin des Plantes deciding on whether to accept a drinks invite with a potential hookup. In order to meet up with any suitors in Paris, she has to get a Pass Sanitaire. A form. It’s so France!
Meanwhile, her Paris friends are an eclectic bunch who all recall variations of that chainsmoking scary-chic-lady-boss from Emily in Paris. I LIKE them!
I’m curious to see what threads of adventure, conflict, and sisterhood the friends offer up. I’m also keen to see what male characters emerge as MacNicol’s lovers… and whether any of them ignite feelings of attachment, conflict, or shift in her perspective.
Most of all, I want to find a way to cheer for MacNicol to get some and for it to be GREAT.
But what about you? What’s working for you in this book? What’s not?
New in books…
In the spirit of Rebecca Traister's Good and Mad and Roxane Gay's Bad Feminist comes a courageous, in-depth investigation into the modern epidemic of shame in our society—what it is, why women are uniquely susceptible, and how we can shift the shame off our plates and live our best lives in an over-exposed, image-obsessed world.
For millions of women, shame is a vicious predator. It tells us we are less than, that we are unworthy. We try everything to escape shame—ignoring it, intellectualizing it, and even, ironically, shaming ourselves for feeling it. The reality is that women experience shame more frequently and more intensely than men—a direct result, as acclaimed journalist Melissa Petro explains, of a patriarchal culture that “urges women to feel bad about themselves, and then punishes them when they do.” Why can’t we figure out how to break the shame cycle once and for all?
And with that, stay tuned for more weekly commentary on this book, an author chat, and an upcoming virtual salon Ask-a-Therapist with a dear friend of The Empress, our very own
from , who is just such a gift to the community.Yours in Grandeur & Deep Sh*t,
PS - I am a human typo. Amnesty appreciated!
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I love that you use the phrase "childless-by-choice" here. I know why we're saying "childless cat lady" culturally at the moment, but it still indicates a gap, a loss. My personal fave is "child-free", it has a certain energy to it, like you have more potential to do something wild.
I’m going to pass on this book. Not really my cup of tea. Looking forward to future choices. 🥰❤️