Finding F*ck Yes: A Memoir of Orgasms & Insulin

By Clare Edgeman

Clare Marie Edgeman's journey to Finding F*ck Yes is chocolate cake in an era of paleo diets and the Whole 30: indulgent, sticky, and not diet-culture friendly. From her nerdy teenage years in rural Montana to her empowered late twenties in New York City, this vulnerable memoir is simultaneously hilarious, heartwarming, and pain

• Language: English
• Publisher: New Degree Press
• Release date: Apr 10, 2020
• ISBN: 9781641374798

Book preview

PRAISE FOR Finding Fuck Yes

"This book taught me more about healthy female sexuality than any Cosmo article and empowered me more than any Spice Girls song. Finding Fuck Yes should be required reading for women of any age who want to discover (or rediscover) their power."

–Naïna broke up with her boyfriend after reading this book

"Edgeman bares her heart in Finding Fuck Yes and shows us how an adventurous, diabetic, self-proclaimed slut navigates the world! Witty, coy, and honest, you won’t be able to put this work down. I learned, I related, and I definitely felt validated in ghosting that finance bro I matched with eons ago."

–Courtney met her partner on a devious

BDSM

site

A painstakingly honest, sometimes uncomfortable, absolutely riveting memoir—I couldn’t put it down.

–Sarah married a man she’d never dated

"Finding Fuck Yes is as fearless as it is funny. Edgeman dives deep into dating, sexuality, and the ever-illusory self-love. This book tackles everything from spoon theory to sex parties, with big hearted prose. I felt seen and I laughed out loud. A lot."

–Margi poly, sex positive feminist AF, kinda scared of Tinder

"As a cis latinx man, books like this rarely capture my attention. I don’t connect with the protagonist—I’m interested in their journey but can’t relate. In Finding Fuck Yes, the sheer transparency of Clare’s stories and the quality of the writing made me feel like I was living through her. I was emotionally invested in everyone, from the disgusting words of The Power Forward to the sweet, sweet Ginger. Clare welcomes the reader into her personal, private life (including the harsh realities) all the while making it beautiful. Finding Fuck Yes encouraged me to take on life and find my own ‘fuck yes’ with my wife." 

–Angel met his wife in high school

"Finding Fuck Yes reminded me of how I learned to love myself. Clare’s story resonated with my own journey with my partner as I was better able to explore my sexual interests. I was raised to believe women shouldn’t be sexual with a lot of people, but this book showed me how sex can also heal you."

–Jacqueline met her partner on Tinder

"Oh God! This book is amazing—free spirited, open hearted, and utterly fearless. I might have to stop trying to online date, and just start trying to hook up! I recognized so much of my own experience, but from the perspective of a person literally going through a dance with death and embracing life with wild abandon. Finding Fuck Yes is a breath of fresh air, and a joyous celebration of freedom, sex and adventure!"

–Erika active online dater

"I found this intense book to be an intelligent, hilarious look into how incredible it can be to start to love yourself. The fearlessness with which Edgeman approaches sex is both horrifying and inspiring. Finding Fuck Yes is pure fucking magic."

–Justin married to the only woman he’s ever had sex with

Nothing quite like reading about cum that defies the laws of physics while you’re riding crowded public transit. 10/10 would recommend.

–Cally lost her virginity to a dude who then fucked their teacher (the teacher went to jail)

"Finding Fuck Yes is an empowering and honest story about sex, self-reflection, and Type 1 diabetes—full of essential insights for everyone, but especially young people coming into adulthood."

–Emmma asexual & Type 1 diabetic

Finding Fuck Yes

Finding Fuck Yes

A MEMOIR OF ORGASMS & INSULIN

Clare Marie Edgeman

71624.png

New Degree Press

Copyright © 2020 Clare Marie Edgeman

All rights reserved.

Finding Fuck Yes 

A MEMOIR OF ORGASMS & INSULIN

ISBN

978-1-64137-474-3 Paperback

978-1-64137-477-4 Kindle Ebook

978-1-64137-479-8 Ebook

Contents - Chapters

AUTHOR’S NOTE

PROLOGUE

ONE: THE BIG SKY STATE

TWO: PERFORMANCE ON & OFF THE STAGE

THREE: THE CHRISTMAS SPIRIT

FOUR: SAYING YES TO ADVENTURE

FIVE: FUCKING WHILE DIABETIC

SIX: COLLECTING ACCENTS

SEVEN: THE MAN I DATED

EIGHT: WE LOVE FUCKING TOURISTS

NINE: IT’S NOT PORN, IT’S ART

TEN: KINDLE, NOTEBOOK, SNACK

ELEVEN: PAIN & PLEASURE

TWELVE: PARMESAN CHEESE

THIRTEEN: THE MOST SYMMETRICAL LOVE TRIANGLE EVER

FOURTEEN: THE BOTANY OF DESIRE

FIFTEEN: CHEMISTRY ON & OFF THE SCREEN

SIXTEEN: GOING FOR THE GOLDMAN

SEVENTEEN: THE OLD FASHIONED WAY

EIGHTEEN: A FUCKING AMAZING VIEW

NINETEEN: SEX PARTIES

TWENTY: LOWS

TWENTY-ONE: GIVE & TAKE

TWENTY-TWO: WHEN THE PATH TURNS TO GRAVEL

TWENTY-THREE: ARTHUR WEASLEY

EPILOGUE

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Contents - Poems

Unsatisfied

Greatest Shame

Insecurities

Lesson Learned

Simple Things

Science, Love, and NPR

Tonight, London is Full

Adventure Haiku

I Miss

I Bring Flowers

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow (for The Teacher)

Meet His Eyes

Combustible

Enough

Lying in Bed

Am I / I’m

End of August: New York City, Home

The Men on the Streets of New York City

My Definition of Blue

With You, or Someone Like You

Home for the Holidays

Hello 31

For the woman who taught me to love the word fuck

&

for everyone who’s ever felt like they were too much and somehow not enough.

It is my wish for you, dear reader, that a part of my story awakens, inspires, or titillates you into action. To tell your story. To live the life you always dreamed, imagined, or hoped for.

AUTHOR’S NOTE

As my favorite

sassy refrigerator magnet espouses, Incredible as it may seem, my life is based on a true story. The stories in this book are memories stored in my mind and body. Whether they align with the memories stored in the minds and bodies of those represented in these pages is less certain. This book explores my experiences in the first two decades of this millennium and was written as reflection and recollection. The poems, however, were written at the time of each experience.

Nicknames are used throughout, except for when they aren’t.

Something else you should know is that there is a lot of sex in this book. Almost all of it was consensual, but one chapter includes a sexual encounter that readers whose lives have been affected by sexual assault may not wish to read. That chapter is titled The Old-Fashioned Way. You can read this book without that chapter.

Unsatisfied

I love who I am.

Yet even in the most content of moments

I wish I could contain 10,000

more versions of me.

More like my mother.

More like the girl I could be in the hat.

There are multitudes of me inside myself.

And so I create and

kiss beautiful men and

tear apart my soul and

in the same moment

can be enough and

entirely unsatisfied.

PROLOGUE

It turns out

that feeling like the awkward, ugly girl at the sex party is way worse than feeling like the awkward, ugly girl at the high school dance. Yet, they are remarkably comparable feelings, and both involve trying not to cry in a red-walled bathroom stall. The karate dojo where my first sex party was hosted had the same general color scheme as my hometown West Yellowstone Wolverines—red, white, and sex.

Much like my nerdy, sexless, high school experience, my first sex party was about two sips of tequila away from an unmitigated disaster. But it was also a ridiculous, sexy, vulnerable, and hilarious celebration. Which is my greatest hope for this book.

This isn’t a coming-of-age story. And it is. This isn’t exactly a sex memoir. And it is. This isn’t a remarkable story. And it is. These pages are a reflection of our society, a meditation on self-worth, a treatise on how we treat women who love sex, and a challenge of how we view women who are not thin. Is this all sounding a lot like slutty Eat Pray Love or American Fleabag? Don’t worry, it isn’t. And it totally is.

I ached for stories like mine when I was young. Stories that taught me it was okay to just be okay. It was okay to be a slut, to want connection and pleasure but not be ready for partnership. That it was more than okay to be my whole self. That, ultimately, it was my only option.

My path to self-love involved a lot of things that were supposed to make me feel bad and worthless. I stumbled around a lot, trying on many different ways of being in the world before I learned that there are other paths—paths that centered around career and art, pleasure and travel, adventure and desire. I learned to love my body by saying an enthusiastic fuck yes to experience. Some of my experiences are pretty out there, and my journey is my own. I’m not advocating that everyone walk my promiscuous path—you’ve got your own damn path.

I also want to be clear: I didn’t date most of the men described in these pages. I fucked them. And most of the time it was fun, though there were also times when it wasn’t. At times, it was boring, frustrating, sad, and delightful. And at other times, it was wonderfully, blissfully, deeply satisfying.

Much of my identity in my late twenties was crafted around being a strong, independent, curvy, diabetic slut. It was an identity that didn’t always sit easily with me, but one I earned and grew more comfortable with over time. I strove to break down my own assumptions about attraction and challenged myself to get comfortable with rejection. Whatever confidence I won by my thirties was a far cry from the insecure, isolated young woman who moved away from Montana at the age of eighteen.

The original title of this book, Crossing the Date Line: Swiping Right for Adventure, was suggested to me by a man I studied with in Southern California the summer I was twenty-six. He was short, bookish, funny, loved Shakespeare, and wouldn’t consider dating a woman if she’d had more than seventeen sexual partners. He’d fuck her, sure, but not date her. Seventeen was his promiscuity tipping point. At the time, I’d had exactly seventeen sexual partners.

For the record, I no longer know my number. I stopped counting around ninety.

Somewhere along the way, this book evolved from Crossing the Date Line into Finding Fuck Yes. This happened as I realized my story is more than unbelievable and entertaining sexcapades—it is my journey to knowing myself and my own power. It is my acceptance and rejection of my Type 1 diabetes. It is about an ever-evolving understanding of what fuck yes means to me.

Finding Fuck Yes is chocolate cake in an era of paleo diets and the Whole 30. It is indulgent and sticky and not diet-culture friendly.

And along the way, I learned that sex is an awful lot like chocolate cake.

Sometimes we eat chocolate cake because we are celebrating, and we enjoy every minute of it. Sometimes we eat chocolate cake when we are depressed, and we eat too much and feel like shit afterward. Sometimes we eat chocolate cake because we’re bored. Sometimes we eat chocolate cake because it’s there. Sometimes we don’t have any chocolate cake at all, for years. And some people don’t eat chocolate cake at all, ever. Chocolate cake is just cake. Sex is just sex. Sometimes it is great, sometimes it is terrible. It can be holy and wonderful and overindulgent and gooey.

Sex is a way to connect and a way to avoid vulnerable connection. It has no inherent moral value in and of itself, but plenty of people in this world label both sexual openness and carbohydrates as morally repugnant.

one

106555.png

THE BIG SKY STATE

Montana

. The Big Sky State. Where you inevitably bang your friends’ brothers.

Montana is first times and last times.

Having penetrative sex for the first time.

Picking up a guy in the bar for the first time.

Using Tinder for the first time.

Falling for my co-star for the first time.

Kissing a woman for the first time. And meaning it.

Having amazing sex on my kitchen table for the last time.

Hooking up with guys who hunt and fly-fish for the last time.

Kissing my grad school boyfriend for the last time.

Falling in love out of loneliness and proximity for the last time.

Believing the nonsense about my body being undesirable for the last time.

Almost.

◊

I grew up in the incredibly small town of West Yellowstone. Whatever small town you are currently picturing, my hometown is smaller. It is about one square mile of houses, restaurants, and hotels carved out of the corner of Montana where the Gallatin National Forest meets Yellowstone National Park. Year-round, fewer than 1,000 people call West Yellowstone home. In the summer, that population rises to 20,000-30,000 on any given night.

West Yellowstone is a small place with a big profile. It’s the most popular entrance to Yellowstone National Park due to its proximity to Yellowstone’s most famous and most phallic feature: Old Faithful Geyser. The house I grew up in is a mere thirty-two miles from Old Faithful. Neither of my parents were locals. They were both East Coast transplants who moved west for mountains and wide-open spaces. My graduating class comprised of ten people. In total. As the valedictorian, I was the top ten percent of my graduating class.

Despite that, or maybe partly because of it, I grew up believing I was unattractive. I was an artsy kid, loved theater, wouldn’t stop singing, and had very little interest in sports. I also didn’t do drugs, drink, or have much interest in hanging around other kids while they drank and did drugs. Part of my aversion to the casual partying that is such a ubiquitous part of the American teenage experience was because I am a diabetic. I was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the end of my junior year of high school.

A shocking number of people don’t understand the severity of Type 1 diabetes, so briefly: Type 1 diabetes used to be called juvenile diabetes as the onset occurs far more frequently in children than adults. As a Type 1 diabetic, I don’t produce any insulin. This means I need to inject insulin to stay alive. Without it, I would die in a matter of days. However, injecting insulin is also a dangerous game. If I inject too much of it, I could die in a matter of hours. And there is no cure.

I manage my diabetes by wearing an insulin pump—a small device that looks like a pager and connects to my body via a two-foot-long plastic tube, twenty-four-hours-a-day, every day. It can be disconnected for short periods of time, like when I shower or have sex, but remains connected to my body 99.99 percent of the time. I also wear a continuous glucose monitor—a piece of plastic about the size of a house key that communicates with my insulin pump and iPhone via Bluetooth and radio frequencies. This device provides hundreds of blood glucose readings a day but is a relatively new technology that wasn’t available when I was first diagnosed. Back then, I used a lancet to make myself bleed ten to twenty times a day. This was the only way to check the glucose in my blood and make the necessary adjustments to insulin and carbohydrates. It is a delicate and intricate equation with small margins of error and potentially lethal consequences. The permanence and danger of this disease were difficult for my teenage brain to fully comprehend.

I was diagnosed just before my seventeenth birthday, which further separated me from my peers, as my obsession with food and control made me even more uptight and removed. There were no other Type 1 diabetics in my high school. I was alone.

I was mercilessly teased as a kid. In junior high, we had unsupervised time in the locker room, and the girls in my class invented a game. The goal of the game was to make me cry, the winner being whoever was able to accomplish this quickly. I was a sensitive and emotionally available twelve-year-old, and an easy target for body shaming. I was actually a rather thin kid, but other kids are often cruel. Any deviation outside of the norm, even by just a few pounds, makes one a target for girls trying to make themselves feel more beautiful and important by comparison.

I was no saint. When given the chance to turn the tables, I also teased girls we deemed less attractive. I longed for attention, belonging, and affection. The boys also teased me as I got older, manifesting in a strange balance between objectification and rejection. In my sophomore year of high school, some of the boys took to calling me Ghetto Booty. At the time, I was completely unaware of the racist connotations of this nickname and the racist origins of much of society’s fatphobia. It was 2002 in rural Montana, and all I knew was that it was not a good thing to be Ghetto Booty. It meant the boys slapped my ass as part of a game, but that they also placed bets on how drunk someone would have to be to kiss me.

My first boyfriend lived in a town about 200 miles away. We met at a performing arts camp, and he eventually came out as gay. You may be thinking his attendance at performing arts camp should have been my first clue, but straight guys love musicals too, and it’s hard not to fall in love with your Marius as a young Eponine belting out On My Own. He came out to me on MSN Messenger. In pink font.

He was the first boy to whom I’d ever said, I love you. He wasn’t able to say it back. I later learned that he’d come out to most of his friends long before coming out to me. I felt betrayed and confused. He was the one who asked to kiss me at the camp dance. He was the one who talked to me for hours on the phone. He was my first love. He was also the first person to ever come out to me, and I didn’t yet understand that when someone comes out to you, even if you’re ostensibly their girlfriend, it isn’t about you. It’s about them, and it is a beautiful sign of love and respect in its own right. However, my seventeen-year-old brain told me I was clearly broken and unlovable.

My second boyfriend was incredibly hot. The kind of home-grown Montana handsome that the girls in my hometown were jealous of when I brought him to prom. He was also abstinent. He was perfectly fine with blowjobs and foreplay though. Like many young Christian men I knew, he attempted to play by the rules but also get off. As my wonderful, liberal, feminist mother said at the time, He would be a perfect boyfriend if he would just have sex with you. Amen, Mama, amen.

I believe both of these young men loved me in the ways they knew how, given our circumstances. However, I believed they loved me in spite of my body. I believed they liked my brain, my wit, and my sense of humor. I thought they put up with my body but couldn’t possibly be attracted to it. I carried this belief with me to college. As I started my marathon of higher education, I brought the scars and insecurities of a lifetime of teasing and two very confusing relationships with me.

◊

After high school, I went to New York University for a year. I went from 900 people in my entire town to 900 people in my dorm in the space of two flights and a cab ride. NYU wasn’t the right fit, so I swapped coasts. I spent four years at Pacific Lutheran University to complete my BFA in theater with minors in dance, anthropology, and French. During my five years of undergraduate education, I had sex a total of three times and dated one man for six weeks. We were both virgins and discussed losing our virginities to one another. Unfortunately, he broke up with me just after winter break junior year and started dating a very thin, self-assured tech-theater major. He lost his virginity to her.

I no longer put any value in the concept of virginity, but at the time, not being a virgin was something I strongly desired. I wanted to have penetrative sex for the first time, and I wanted to shed the label associated with my inexperience. However, this frustratingly elusive sexual milestone took another year and a half to reach. It was an unexceptional story, and we only had sex twice. We were friends, he was much more sexually experienced, and I was intimidated and not certain I liked him enough to navigate that experience gap.

Almost a year later, the week before I graduated from college, I had sex with a fellow theater major. We were drunk, we fucked for only a few minutes on my yoga mat in my living room, and my insulin pump banged him in the chest as he took off my