All Fours / Miranda July

This was my first experience of being too old. I had not always gotten exactly what I had wanted —men had been unwilling to leave their wives for me or to do more than flirt— but even in these humbling cases I hadn’t questioned my right to feel desire. Now suddenly my lust was uncouth, inappropriate. I was powerful and interesting, perhaps funny and unique; I was taken seriously in a way he wasn’t used to but he was not jerking off to me. Just a few years earlier, at forty or forty-two, I would have been a contender, but now it was too late. And he was just the first one. From now on this would be the norm. And not just with men younger than me, but with all men. I would never get what I wanted anymore, man-wise.

p. 84

I described his mustache, his buttoned top button. “All the things that I thought would keep me from falling for him suddenly flipped around and became the things I love most. What is that? How did this happen?” I said, as if she had been the one responsible.

p. 135

“Remember the Simone de Beauvoir quote,” she said, “You can’t have everything you want but you can want everything you want.”

p. 271