That Thing You Do With Your Mouth: The Sexual Autobiography of Samantha Matthews as Told to David Shields Read Free

can be the nurturer), self-confident, funny, and aggressive …
    I’ve started seeing a new therapist, and that’s been consuming me. With her I talk about my feelings as if they belonged to someone else—could be my handy ol’ disassociation tool. Lately, I feel both connected and disconnected. Does that make sense?
    Does that happen to you when you’re writing about “naked” things? Do you ever feel vulnerable or worried how it may come across when you write your “secrets”?
    I can hardly go more than a day or two without seeing some part of Gaudi’s Sagrada Família out of the corner of my eye. Counting the ways I hate that thing…
    I always sensed my dad had a secret life. He’s eternally curious and passionate about the most minute details in life, sees beauty everywhere. I’d cuddle up in his lap and we’d play duets of “Heart and Soul” together, his strong, square, padded-cushion fingers interlaced with mine. “Hold on,” he’d say when we were listening to a song we loved, “it’s coming, right now right now… and… here! Listen to this!” I sang in a high-pitched voice to the Bee Gees, laughing hysterically, and he’d tell me I had a great ear. Searching for gnomes in the fantasia forest in our backyard; staring at the formidable beauty of the Olympic Mountains in the skyline—there was magic and feeling in everything, something huge and heartfelt. He was moved and moved me. He has also acted on beauty everywhere.
    I remember finding a Playboy in his bottom dresser drawer when I was fifteen, and that was the first confirmation of what I’d suspected. Not that Playboy represents anything, really. I just knew in my gut he’d had affairs, which were later confirmed when I was around nineteen. To be honest, that part doesn’t really bother me at all. As I get older, I find myself following in some of his footsteps, or the ones I recognize—trying to find the adventure, the gems hidden under the rocks, and knowing I can’t share that with everyone.
    The first month William and I were together, I was explosively in love with him; I remember saying I was always looking for the celebration in life. I’d just come out of my marriage to Jaume. I didn’t want boring, settled. I wanted a connection and I wanted to feel it as often as I could, since any day could be my last. I’m sure I sounded manic. I was showing him how excited I was to be with him and how much I loved him, how ready I was for an adventure together, and hoping to find an ease in that, a joy—again, just like my dad had taught me. William fell silent and shut down. My enthusiasm for life has always inspired others and led them to a tidal high; now it was as though I’d told him I’d had a sex change or something.
    He said what I’d said had scared him: he wasn’t capable of being exciting all the time and normal/settled is a good thing. To him, I represented instability rather than freedom. My whole body sank into the chair and something clicked in me. I knew from then on I wouldn’t be able to share this ecstatic side I had. He’d never feel it that way; he’d just feel scared of it. In my love I’m not unpredictable, but in the way I live life, I like to be spontaneous, and if there’s trust, shouldn’t anything be possible? (Don’t answer.)
    I almost never talk passionately with William about anything in my life, really. And when I do, I have tomake sure I say it only once, because if I repeat it for the sake of weight, it immediately loses its value for him. It’s also an American/British thing. We—Americans—are known for being overemphatic, exaggerated. That, mixed with me being what he calls a “thesp,” is something he doesn’t fully understand, so now I let out my passionate side with my girlfriends, my friends, and with him I curb it. A