“Autofiction”
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She had certainly considered not being married, in the same manner that she would momentarily picture herself with a shining, bald head when in the presence of an electric razor. The universe held vast (if not endless) opportunities for the unexpected to occur, anything was possible, etc. etc.—and she was not one to remain beholden to a decision that had gone sour. But she’d been happily married now for 15 years, the “happily” of which felt all at once surprising and so sweetly normie as to occasionally be mistaken for subversive.
She spent a not-insignificant amount of screen time on Reddit threads in which women her age had Finally Had Enough and Could No Longer Stand Their Husbands and Just Needed to Vent, and she was only a little ashamed to admit she found this to be a misuse-slash-emotional hijacking of the r/perimenopause sub. She knew, though, beyond reasonable doubt, that had she married any one of her own early contenders, she herself would be unloved and posting through it from a burner account in the laundry room.
This seemed to be the crux of midlife—after 40, one’s good decisions proved to have an exceptionally long half-life, and the bad decisions doubled down until they became caricatures of themselves. “Come one, come all to the Hall of Wonders,” a dejected-looking ringmaster shouted over a wonky pipe organ, “Marvel at the Woman Who Fell for the Lies of the Industrial Wedding Complex!” She'd sometimes peek through the striped fabric of the tent, worried there was no statute of limitations in joining the spotlit woman sitting dead-eyed onstage.
Too harsh, she thought, rereading her first few paragraphs, “complacently” might be better than “dead-eyed." “Subversive” was gnawing at her, too. She took a break to skim an obscenely long 1968 New Yorker article about The Graduate, poured herself some tea, and wandered back to her doc.
At the last wedding she’d attended—six years ago now, maybe even seven—a guest spent the latter part of the night flaming friends and ex-friends and ex-lovers. She herself had gone to bed before 10pm, and so didn’t hear about it until the next morning. In the retelling there were multiple women in tears, and she was, at first, overwhelmed with jealousy that she hadn’t somehow been involved (on the side of making people cry, to be clear, not on the side of the aggrieved). Her taste for interpersonal drama had since waned, and besides, there were no weddings anymore, only funerals, and the outfits for those were far less likely to incite the ire of someone’s new wife or girlfriend, which really took all the fun and strategy out of getting dressed.
She re-read her last sentence and laughed, because there was an undeniable deliciousness to drama, and she understood why, by midlife, some people had grown tired of its absence. And that’s why people have affairs, she thought, because dancing erotically with an exposed power line in your mouth was one way to feel alive. That said, letting someone who was not your husband go down on you in a car or a supply closet or in some sh-tty, rundown motel room was probably Exhibit Z that things were no longer working. She liked to think she'd have the self-awareness (and also the courage) to say that out loud—beforehand—if she ever felt the inclination. Admittedly, she had not adhered to this exact order of events in previous relationships, and so felt no moral high ground at having abstained for now close to two decades.
She paused, thinking back on her “anything is possible” and “vast (if not endless) opportunities” thesis, then envisioned herself at a party. Wow, my hair got long. She was older by about ten years, which she could intuit mostly by the staunch expressiveness of her jewelry. After introducing an acquaintance to her new, very handsome…Pilates instructor…wife? (Why not), she regaled them both with the minutiae of a recent Esalen retreat, of which she'd done several since her inherently empowering divorce journey culminated in a best-selling novel for Women in Their 40s Who Had Finally Had Enough. She felt a twinge of guilt at having let her imagination run so far in this direction. It passed. She took a sip of tea.
The mug was emblazoned with her 14-year-old niece's most recent yearbook photo. Just before picture day, some dipsh-t boy at school had made fun of her for having what he'd deemed a "unibrow," so she’d used a razor to shave a wider-than-normal gap between her otherwise perfect eyebrows. When you’re a teenager you really have to decide whose opinion you’re going to trust, she thought, because a lot of the people around you, statistically, are going to grow up to be losers. In high school, she’d freely given her virginity to a kid who’d later been objectively mean to her. He had not embraced his eventual hair loss and was now (by all accounts) mean to his wife, and three decades later she was still embarrassed that she’d ever let him touch her. Thankfully, no merch had been printed to commemorate the event.
That was unnecessary, she thought. She should cut the paragraph. She should kill this whole essay, really, as it was not at all what she set out to write, nor did she feel it reflected especially well upon her. She ultimately did neither, instead choosing to title it Autofiction, thereby traversing the liminal, high-drama tightrope between truth and fantasy in a low-cut sequined leotard, breasts defying gravity, spotlight glinting off her wedding ring, ready to feign offense and tumble towards the side of fiction if ever taken to task. That’s good, she decided, removing a final ridiculous line about “lions roaring and snapping below” before closing her laptop. I should see what Michael's up to, she thought, and so she did.
“Autofiction” emailed out 1.6.2026 with newsletter-only exclusives. Subscribe here.