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The Dry Season

Melissa Febos

Listen on Audiobook

In the wake of a catastrophic two-year relationship, Melissa Febos decided to take a break: For three months she would abstain from dating, relationships, and sex. Her friends were amused. Did she really think three months was a long time? But to Febos, it was. Ever since her teens, she had been in one relationship after another with men and women. As she puts it, she could trace a “daisy chain of romances” from her adolescence to her midthirties. Finally, she would carve out time to focus on herself and examine the patterns that had produced her midlife disaster. Over those first few months, she gleaned insights into her past and awoke to the joys of being single. She decided to extend her celibacy, not knowing it would become the most fulfilling and sensual year of her life. No longer defined by her romantic pursuits, she learned to relish the delights of solitude, the thrill of living on her own terms, the distinct pleasures unmediated by lovers, and the freedom to pursue her ideals without distraction or guilt. Bringing her own experiences into conversation with those of women throughout history—from eleventh-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen, Virginia Woolf, and Octavia Butler to the Shakers and Sappho—Febos situates her story within a newfound lineage of role models who unapologetically pursued their ambitions and ideals.

By abstaining from all forms of romantic entanglement, Febos began to see her life and her self-worth in a radical, new way. Her year of divestment transformed her relationships with friends and peers, her spirituality, her creative practice, and, most of all, her relationship to herself. Blending intimate personal narrative and incisive cultural criticism, The Dry Season tells a story that’s as much about celibacy as its inverse: pleasure, desire, fulfillment. Infused with fearless honesty and keen intellect, it’s the memoir of a woman learning to live at the center of her own story, and a much-needed catalyst for a new conversation around sex and love.

One summer's eve

watercolour on arches paper cold pressed

1. Lots of people have one but you don't really think about it until they start talking about making waffles and you're like "oh shit they have a waffle maker"

2. Messy as fuck and you know what as far as I see it why even bother when you have pancakes, you don't need to bother with all those fluids and crevices with pancakes

3. WHY DOES EVERYONE AT THE WEDDING THINK YOU NEED ONE

4. Theoretically implied fun with whipped cream until it melts and starts soaking into shit

5. If you don't prep ur surfaces ur gonna have a bad time

6. It's fun in the kitchen but only on like special occasions cause again it's a pain in the ass to clean

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