Excerpt from Vladimir by Julia May Jonas, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

"Your house is amazing," he said, picking up a program of Frida Kahlo's home in Mexico and turning it over in his hands.

"Well, it's a document. Of time passed and things seen." I carefully set my martini down on the antique ashtray stand we used as a drink table. "Sometimes I look at it as a life well-lived. Sometimes I want to burn it all to the ground and become a minimalist."

He shook his head. "But this is the best kind of clutter—this looks like a museum—it's not chain store junk, plastic containers, remote controls."

"Those are more hidden. I have my bags of bags of bags. But does one always want to be surrounded by so much culture? There's something exhausting about being constantly bombarded by everyone's best efforts," I said.

"I don't believe you think that. If you're exhausted by that, you wouldn't be able to survive academia," he said. He was, to my great delight, sparring with me.

"Well, who says I have?" I raised my eyebrows and pursed my lips in what I hoped looked like a knowing nod at the Human Comedy.

He took a large drink from his glass and spilled several drops on his chinos, right at the tip of the crotch of his pants that stretched tight like a trampoline between his crossed legs. "I'm surprised he's allowed out."

He looked toward the window, black and reflective with the night behind it. From the angle we were both sitting, we could see each other in the reflection, but not ourselves. Without trying, we caught each other's gaze. We each smiled, close-lipped, shyly. He averted his eyes.

In the days and nights that followed, it was that image of him in the black glass of the window that haunted and warmed me. His arm extended across the sofa cushion, the cross of his leg revealing the stripe of his sock, his head turned over his shoulder, the gesture of his eyes casting down, like an old-fashioned stage actress looking bashfully at a bouquet.

I usually demurred from frankly addressing details about my marriage, and I sometimes wonder why I chose to be so forthright with Vladimir Vladinski, experimental novelist and junior professor of literature at our small college. But of course I immediately answer myself. I wanted to be intimate with him, so deeply intimate, from that moment I saw him with his legs crossed in the reflection of the window. It was as if an entirely new world had opened up for me, or if not a world, a pit, with no bottom—a continual experience of the exhilarating delirium of falling.

And so I divulged everything. How my husband and I had a tacit agreement that we would be as sexually free as we liked during our marriage. No asking, no telling, mostly communicated through off-handed comments and nods. We didn't discuss it, good lord, who wanted to take the time to discuss such things? Embarrassing, pedestrian, and truly, not our style. I enjoyed the idea of his virility, and I enjoyed the space that his affairs gave me. I was a professor of literature, a mother to Sidney, and a writer. What did I want with a husband who wanted my attention? I wanted to avoid, and I wanted to be avoided. As to the age of the women, I felt too connected to my experience of myself when I was in college to protest. When I was in college, the lust I felt for my professors was overwhelming. It did not matter if they were men or women, attractive or unattractive, brilliant or average, I desired them deeply. I desired them because I thought they had the power to tell me about myself. If I had a shred of brazenness, or even confidence, at the time, I'm sure I would have walked into one of their offices and thrown myself at them. I did not. But if one of them had whistled, I surely would have come running.

And my husband was weak. He wanted to be desired, he lived off it, it was his sunlight and water and oxygen. And every fall a new, fresh group of young and fervent women flooded in, their skin more luminous and beautiful each year, especially in comparison to our own, which seemed to fade and chap the longer we stayed in that upstate town that was cold from October through June.

Excerpted from Vladimir by Julia May Jonas. Copyright © 2022 by Julia May Jonas. Excerpted by permission of Avid Reader Press. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.