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CASSIE
I ASKED MATILDA for a last-minute meeting a few days after Dauphine’s cop fantasy. Being her Guide
meant spending less time with my own, but my one-night stand with Mark had left me feeling a little
off.
As she made her way to where I was sitting in Audubon Park, she looked the picture of Southern
gentility. She had on a straw hat, dark glasses and an off-the-shoulder coral-colored sundress that
showed off her red hair and the smattering of freckles across her smooth décolleté. She was nearing
sixty but looked as fresh and sexy as someone half her age. And by the way she walked, you could tell
she knew entrances were her particular talent. It was her idea to meet near the pickup soccer pitch by
the Saint Charles entrance. She moved towards the bench, and even the players during a breakaway
had to stop to take her in.
As we sat together, I caught her up on Dauphine, explaining how she was learning to give over
control.
“That’s a tough one, control,” Matilda said, eyeing the soccer game. “Too much and you never
allow yourself to know others. Too little and you never truly know yourself. How about you, Cassie,
how are you faring out there in the wilds?”
“Fine. Good. I … I did it. I had sex,” I blurted out.
“Oh? How lovely. With whom?”
“Some guy I just met,” I said, sounding oddly triumphant. “The one from Ignatius’s that day. He’s
not really my type. But sexually, he was fun.”
“So you’re not going to see him again?”
“I don’t know. He’s almost ten years younger than me. Young. Self-centered. Sexy, though. Maybe I
will see him again. The beauty of it is, I don’t care whether I do or not. But the sex was incredible.”
“So you don’t want to hear from him again?” Matilda asked.
“Not really … I don’t know. Does that make me a slut?”
Matilda turned her whole body towards me, her attention fully off the soccer game. She looked as
though I’d just slapped her.
“The word slut, unless employed by iron-clad feminists or ironically by irony experts, has no
business coming out of a woman’s mouth, do you hear me? Not when she is describing her own sexual
behavior and especially if she’s describing another woman’s. It’s the kind of word that can scar,
Cassie.”
I was stunned. I’d never heard her use such a sharp tone.
“That word has been used as a weapon against women all around the world, since the beginning of
time, to keep us feeling unworthy and separate. It can have especially tragic consequences for young
women. Some shut down; some lose their confidence; some lose their desire to explore their
sexuality; and still others end their lives over sexual shame.”
I’d never really given the subject much thought, but I have, in my life, felt that shame, that sense that
there was something wrong about wanting and enjoying sex. But since joining S.E.C.R.E.T. that shame
had been fading. In fact, it seemed ludicrous to hold on to any of those old ideas. Then something else
occurred to me.