Exploring the Possibilities of the Zipless Fuck: Megan Hart's FLYING

Erica Jong's novel Fear of Flying (1973) stands proudly beside Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique (1963) and Kate Millet's Sexual Politics (1970) as one of the landmark texts of second-wave feminism. Radical in its frank portrayal of female desire, Fear of Flying depicts erotic poet Isadora Wing's picaresque quest to explore her own sexuality in language as forthright and four-lettered as anything penned by Philip Roth, Henry Miller, or D.H. Lawrence. Today's readers of erotic romance may find Isadora's self-absorption a bit narcissistic, and her fantasy of idealized no-strings-attached sex (the "zipless fuck") almost quaint in today's equal-opportunity hook-up world. But in the early 1970s, when Fear of Flying first made its way onto bookshelves and nightstands the world over, its unapologetic, taken-for-granted belief that women have sexual desires, and those desires are just as raunchy, complex, and contradictory as any man's, proved shocking not just to the average American reader, but to many in the (primarily male) literary establishment.

As I began to read erotic romance writer Megan Hart's latest, Flying, I couldn't help but think that it might have been written with Erica Jong's book, and the fantasy that her protagonist Isabelle Wing describes in that book's opening chapter, firmly in mind:

The zipless fuck was more than a fuck. It was a platonic ideal. Zipless because when you came together zippers fell away like rose petals, underwear blew off in one breath like dandelion fluff. Tongues intertwined and turned liquid. Your whole soul flowed out through your tongue and into the mouth of your lover.
     For the true, ultimate zipless A-1 fuck, it was necessary that you never get to know the man very well. I had noticed, for example, how all my infatuations dissolved as soon as I really became friends with a man, became sympathetic to his problems, listened to him kvetch about his wife, or ex-wives, his mother, his children. After that I would like him, perhaps even love him—but without passion. (11)

In the opening chapter of Hart's Flying, we meet Stella, who seems to have achieved in actuality what Jong's Isadora could only fantasize about. In her twenties, Stella "had taught herself how to be sexy for a man," but now knows "it was so much better to be sexy for herself" (10). Stella's form of sexy is to dress in provocative clothes, fly to a random airport using the free tickets that were part of her divorce settlement from her airline CEO ex, tempt a suitable man in said airport's bar, and take him to a hotel room:

This is what she likes, what she craves. This is what she wants. Being wanted so much he'll do anything, finger her in a hotel doorway, maybe fuck her right there, not caring about anything but getting his cock inside her.... She wants to hold nothing back. Because this is what Stella really wants and craves and needs and seeks. This naked, somehow desperate connection of two people who don't even known each other's last names, but who each knows exactly how the other tastes. (21)

It's quite a shock when Chapter 2 opens with the word "Mom," and we discover that sexy Stella is a mother of a sixteen-year-old boy, a forty-something woman with a dull job, baskets full of laundry, and an ex-husband who shies away from all hints of responsibility beyond the monetary. Popular media warns incessantly about the college-aged girls being sucked into the faceless hook-up culture, but Hart shakes us out of our assumptions about who might want mindless sex, who can take pleasure from it, who has enough confidence to insist that "Her pleasure is hers. Not his." (107).

But there's more to the zipless fuck than pure anonymity. As Jong's Isadora imagines it,

The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one. (14)

And neither, really, has Stella. The careful reader will begin to pick up on the clues Hart scatters through her opening scene, and through the other scenes of anonymous fucking in which Stella, never using her real name, engages during the first half of the novel, that what Stella has come to call "flying" is not quite as free of ulterior motives as a pure zipless fuck might promise. For the men whom Stella chooses are men, like her, who have secrets, men who will feel both titillation and guilt in the midst of their anonymous trysts, and for long after. Men mourning their divorces, or fearing their wives are about to leave them, or afraid that nothing they can do will ever really satisfy a woman. "He looks so broken, and there's not a lot sexier than a man who needs fixing... so long as when the morning comes you can say goodbye," Stella thinks when casing out another potential lover (95).

For Stella, flying is complicated, ambiguous, complex, both a coming alive and a killing off: a "coming out of the dark and into the light, if only for a little while" (56); an "agony" she both "loves and craves" (22); each lover's "scrutiny" the punishment she "deserves" (22). Though she "should feel pity" for these broken men she tempts, she's "unable to find any. Something's cold in her. And broken. But it's her own fault, she supposes, for picking men she knows are already damaged because it feels easier to justify breaking them" (108). Stella isn't good at opening up emotionally, nor is she any good at letting things go, an impossible combination for a person with trauma in her past, a trauma that is gradually revealed through Stella's "flights," her recollections of Craig, the man whose lack of knowledge about the tragedy she'd experienced makes him far more attractive to her than her husband, and her memories of how, eight years earlier, her marriage eventually came to an end.

Stella's story shifts mid-book, from dark erotica to—what? For the longest time, I wasn't sure if Hart was asking me to transition into an erotic romance, or a work of women's fiction. In Chicago, on the way home from a real business trip, dressed not as a sexy siren but in slim-cut jeans, a stretched-out oversized cardigan, and cotton granny pants, Stella meets Matthew, another divorced parent with as much baggage as Stella carries. Before she realizes it, she's telling him her name, sharing a drink, and, when bad weather cancels her flight, accepting his offer to leave the airport bar with him and spend the night at his place. The evening feels more like a date than a hook-up, and almost doesn't end with sex at all, Matthew awkward and unsure, it being his first post-divorce experience. But Stella is relieved when Matthew overcomes his reluctance, and the familiarity of "flying" one again takes hold: "Desire had become the one true constant in her life, the only feeling she could count on never to disappoint her. Desire required nothing from her. No investment. No responsibility. All desire wanted was to be sated. It was physical, and therefore could be killed" (138).

Yet after sating her desire, Stella finds herself answering the question that Matthew asks, the one none of her other hookups have bothered with: where did she get her scars? Sharing that answer proves a catalyst for Stella, a first hint that perhaps the cold inside her can begin to thaw. She begins to build a relationship with Matthew, traveling to Chicago every other week not only for fabulous sex, but for movies and outings and snuggles on the couch. But Matthew never offers to come to Pennsylvania to visit Stella, and seems embarrassed to introduce her to his children, or even mention the fact that he's dating again to his rather clingy ex-wife. And why does he like to hang out at the airport bar, anyways? Is Stella the only one whose relationship to "flying" is more complex than it seems?

Will Matthew turn out to be a temporary stepping-stone on the way to a healthier, happier Stella, now able to accept a more mature love from former crush Craig (women's fiction)? Will Stella return to "flying" after breaking up with Matthew, able to finally enjoy a truly zipless fuck without pain or guilt after working through some of her darker issues (erotica/erotic romance)? Or will Matthew prove himself worthy of Stella's love with a suitably grand and sexy gesture, one that will erase all the doubts his prior less-than-honest behavior have engendered (romance)?

Up to the very end, I wasn't sure which direction Hart would take. And I'm not entirely sure I'm satisfied with the choice she finally made.

But I'm also not sure how satisfied she wants me to be with it, either. Or perhaps that's just wishful thinking on my part...


Would love to hear others' thoughts about Flying, especially about its ending.

Megan Hart, Flying

Harlequin/MIRA, 2014

Free to Be... A Feminist

I was musing the other day, wondering when it was that I first became a feminist. It must have been in college, I guessed, after first taking a course in Women's Studies and being introduced to the central ideas of the second wave feminist movement. But my memory is remarkably bad, something brought home to me yet again after reading these great posts by Dan Kois on Slate about the 40th anniversary of the making of the record album Free to Be... You and Me, which was first released in November 1972. Marlo Thomas and the myriad talented authors, songwriters, actors, and musicians that she recruited to create this groundbreaking album never used the word "feminist" in any of the songs or skits on the record. Yet the examples they set before these (at the time) seven-year-old ears clearly had a lasting effect, allowing me not just to dream of a world where I could "be almost anything [I] want to be," but to take it for granted that such a world would exist when I became a grown-up. Yes, I first became a feminist not in college, but after listening to "Parents Are People," "My Dog is a Plumber," "The Sun and the Moon," and all the other stories, poems, and songs on Free to Be...

The record album is long gone (did one of my younger sisters score it during one of the many "please move your stuff out of our house, we're not your offsite storage" kicks my parents went through over the years?). But I still have a copy of the book, originally published in March of 1974 as an expanded companion volume to the album. Interestingly, the copyright page of my edition reads "Bantam edition/December 1987," dating not from my childhood but from the months right after I graduated from college. Was it a nostalgic purchase, a last glance back at childhood before I moved definitively into the working world of grown-up-ness? Or was it simply a recognition of my roots as a feminist?

Given that the Free to Be project aimed, in the words of one of its co-creators, Letty Cottin Pogrebin, to "dispel myths that distort reality—like pretty-equals-good, and all-mothers-stay-in-the-kitchen, and big-boys-don't cry," to "challenge stereotypes that have imprisoned children's imaginations [and] stunted their emotional development," it's hardly surprising that romance stories are hardly to be found amongst the album's track or the book's pages (12). Yet the story that first comes to mind when I think back to Free to Be... is a romance, at least a romance of sorts: Betty Miles' retelling of the Greek myth of Atalanta.

Second-wave feminists began arguing that folk and fairy tales socialized young children into patriarchal ideology around the same time that Marlo Thomas was putting together the original Free to Be... album. Marcia Lieberman's " 'Some Day My Prince Will Come': Female Acculturation Through the Fairy Tale" (College English 1972) first took issue with the sexism in many familiar fairy tales, and many feminists debated the role such stories should play in childrearing throughout the 1970s and 80s. Some wished to toss out folklore and its outdated sex roles altogether, sex roles that taught girls that beauty and passivity were the highest feminine virtues. Others, arguing for the psychological importance of this literature, decided instead to collect relatively unfamiliar tales that featured stronger, more active female characters (for example, Rosemary Minard's 1975 Womenfolk and Fairy Tales). Still others chose to rewrite the "classic" tales in ways that challenged conventional views of gender socialization and sex roles (Jay Williams' The Practical Princess, published in 1969, and Jack Zipes' 1986 collection, Don't Bet on the Prince).

Hippomenes and Atalanta at the Louvre

Betty Miles proved herself at the forefront of this trend with her retelling of the story of Atalanta for the original Free to Be... album. In the Greek myth, Atalanta, who has taken a vow of chastity in the name of the huntress goddess Artemis, has no wish to marry. After her father pressures her to do so, she agrees, but with one condition: she will only marry a man who can best her in a footrace. Many men try, and many men lose, forfeiting not only Atalanta, but their own lives. Until one young man, Hippomenes, calls on Aphrodite for aid. The goddess of love gives Hippomenes golden apples, which he throws at Atalanta's feet each time she pulls ahead of him during their race. Distracted by the irresistible apples, Atalanta veers off course to retrieve them, ultimately allowing Hippomenes to win the race and her hand in marriage.

The opening of Betty Miles' version of the story tells a similar tale, with small but telling tweaks. Atalanta is desired not for her looks, or for her bloodlines, but because she is "so bright, and so clever, and could build things and fix things so wonderfully" (128). Atalanta's father, a king, is constructed not as simply domineering, but rather as "a very ordinary king; that is, he was powerful and used to having his own way"(128). It is the father, not Atalanta, who comes up with the idea of the footrace, choosing it not only because of his daughter's resistance to marriage, but also because of his own inability to decide who will be the best suitor. In these opening paragraphs, it is not the king, but Atalanta who strikes the reader as the competent and confident participant in this joust over marital prospects.

As the story progresses, Miles makes even larger changes to Atalanta's story. First she re-imagine its hero. It is not Hippomenes, who claims the blood of Poisedon, but the far more prosaic "Young John, who lived in the town" who proves to be Atalanta's chief competitor. While Hippomenes desires Atalanta at first sight, the highly enlightened Young John wishes to meet the princess after seeing her "day by day as she bought nails and wood to make a pigeon house, or choose parts for her telescope, or laughed with her friends" (131). And while Hippomenes does not question the wisdom of winning a mate via footrace, Young John believes it "not right for Atalanta's father to give her away to the winner of the race. Atalanta herself must choose the person she wants to marry, or whether she wishes to marry at all" (131). He races not to win her hand in marriage, but rather for the chance to talk with her, to get to know her, to ask the bright, clever girl if she will be his friend. (On the album, both the patriarchal King and the feminist  Young John were voiced by Alan Alda, suggesting not just difference, but continuity between the two characters. A hopeful sign that the conventional view could easily be transformed into the progressive? Or an ironic warning that Young John might all too easily slip back into the role of dominating patriarch?)

Illustration by Barbara Bascove from Free to Be... You and Me

Miles also rewrites the outcome of Atalanta's footrace. It is not through the intervention of a goddess that John becomes the victor, but instead through his own hard work, running every night after his studies are finished. And Atalanta is not distracted by gaudy fruit, nor is she defeated. For she, too, has practiced every day until she, just like John, "could run the course more quickly than anyone had ever run it before" (131). Instead, John "ran as her equal, side by side with her" until "smiling with the pleasure of the race, Atalanta and Young John reached the finish line together" (135). The memory of Marlo Thomas' and Alan Alda's voices, joined in joyful celebration of their characters' mutual triumph, rings with pleasure in my head to this day.

Miles ends her story not with a wedding, but with adventure. After the two spend the day together, sharing their ideas and interests, each leaves home: "John sailed off to discover new lands. And Atalanta set off to visit the great cities" (135).

Yet the possibility of marriage, of a romantic relationship that develops out of shared admiration and shared interests, remains temptingly open between these two friends: "Perhaps some day they will be married, and perhaps they will not," the narrator teases. The openness of that ending offers young listeners, and young readers, the opportunity to envision either possibility, without insisting they choose one or the other. The story ends by assuring us that no matter which we chose, Atalanta and John would both be "living happily ever after." A feminist fairy tale conclusion indeed.


Do you have any Free to Be... memories? And can you remember when you first considered yourself a feminist?



Photo/illustration credits:
Atalanta and Hippomenes statues: Oregon Live

Next time on RNFF:

Subverting romance conventions in Eloisa James' Your Wicked Ways