This article is syndicated from Adulted, an online wellness magazine for actual grown-ups, covering sex, mental health, sleep and everything midlife, brought to you by Stripes. You can join them at our all-things meno community The Hot Spot. There are two things you learn about me immediately upon setting foot inside my home: I have a pathological fondness for leopard print. My husband and I sleep in separate beds. They’re the centerpiece of our small New York City apartment: two twin beds pushed together, as if we are teenagers trying to comfortably have sex in ..read more

And it’s not a man’s world if it’s my world In 1980, somebody stole my bike, a Huffy 5-speed girls’ model, from our side yard. In my journal, I wrote about its replacement. My dad bought me an old beat-up orange 10-speed, I wrote.. The only thing wrong with it is it needs air.  The new-old bike looked just right:already broken in, sleek, a touch too big for me. It was like inheriting a perfect pair of faded, ripped Levi’s from a brother I didn’t have. At fifteen, I didn’t play sports, but I cycled all over our Chicago north-side neighborhood and beyond. I couldn’t wait to be seen unlockin ..read more

I started writing erotica in the late 1990s when it became clear to me that law school, the career path I’d chosen, wasn’t working out. I was too enamored of all that New York City had to offer and, along with my sexual adventures in the city that never sleeps, I was exploring equally provocative literary ventures, from writing and reading erotica to later running an erotic reading series, where any kind of sex was easily pursued and enjoyed. I jumped right into the fray, even though I’d never written fiction before, dashing off a short story titled “Monica and Me,” a very loosely-veiled fanta ..read more

1. I grew up with a tough name. Siobhan Adcock. Look at it. There’s almost no part of that name that’s not sort-of a pain in the ass. 2. People don’t tend to remember it, and when they do, they can’t pronounce it. Siobhan is an Irish name — it means Jane, or Joan, or Joanne, or if you’re feeling like a sparkly unicorn fairy, “sea foam blowing off the waves.” My father told me (incorrectly as it turns out) that it means “Queen of the Emerald Isles.” He and my mother had heard of it by way of Siobhan McKenna, the famous Irish stage actress who was in Dr. Zhivago. (But not the famously beaut ..read more

My lifelong bad habit of not reading the fine print has been rivaled only by my bad habit of ignoring relationship red flags. Ignoring the fine print landed my acrophobic ass on a pissed-off horse on the edge of a cliff in Mexico. Ignoring red flags landed me in a second marriage that should not have been a second date. I survived both situations. But only now, nearly four years after that trip to Mexico and nearly three years after I left that marriage, do I realize how the former set the stage for the latter. To be honest, the fine print wasn’t really fine. All the pertinent text was the sam ..read more

“How old do you have to be before you live for yourself,” I asked myself, peering past the tweezers. “How many years of your life will you put the comfort of others first?” I shave my face now. I’m fascinated by the stubble growing along the bottom ridges of my jaw. I rub it back and forth, feeling the bristles’ refusal to give way, and delight in the sandpaper tongue licking my fingertips. I’m what they call a late-bloomer. I came out at age 45. I’m queer, genderfluid, and nonbinary trans. I’m a mix of the characteristics and presentations people think of as traditionally male and female and ..read more

One early afternoon about 12 years ago I took three left turns and two right turns along the dense streets of Hanoi, Vietnam — and promptly found myself unutterably lost. I’d arrived for my first-ever visit to the city after a 24-hour journey from my home in Brooklyn late the night before — and as elegant women wearing conical straw hats pedaled past me on bicycles weighted down by flowers and produce, I stood on a street corner there possessed of no phone, no shared language, no context, no map, no prior understanding, no deep wisdom of the culture I’d found myself in, nothing to fall back on ..read more

The text began: “I’m having a bad day so don’t respond. I’m going to turn my phone off anyway.” I took a deep breath and braced myself for what was sure to follow. The rest of her text detailed how much I disappointed her, and ended with how “sad” it was that she used to look up to me. Christine (not her real name) was having a bad day. I could understand that. As my mother’s sole caregiver, she has a lot to deal with. My mother’s multiple sclerosis has left her bedridden, unable to even feed herself. Caring for her is a full-time job, one that Christine has taken on in addition to the full-ti ..read more

The breakout Netflix hit Squid Game from 2021 had everyone abuzz — but I can’t bring myself to watch it. In the show, indebted South Koreans experiencing financial ruin fight to the death for a singular cash prize. While I’ve never been part of a dystopian horror show like Squid Game (debtors have never tried to assassinate me), I grew up with just enough money to get by, which provoked an intense fear of the precarity of life, an exhausting “what if?” that never ends. What if I run out of money?What if I end up homeless? What if I can’t find a good job? and on and on.  In theory, I ..read more

The most direct way to support Black women writers is to buy yourself a book. But here are seven other ways you can elevate Black authors, poets, and artists, which you may not have considered. 1. Word of mouth As analog as this sounds, it really does work on so many levels. This was how things went “viral” before social media. I remember when Waiting To Exhale by Terry McMillan came out in 1992. Not only were Black women talking this book up — in church, in sorority meetings, at work — but that iconic cover by Black Artist Synthia Saint James was everywhere, raising her profile as well. If yo ..read more