What Do Women Want

circuitry, can be reinforced and augmented, or allowed to whither, throughout life? Did the narrowness of erotic thoughts attenuate the channels on which these thoughts travel within the brain, thin the ranks of neurotransmitters that flash along these paths, lead, in turn, to more constriction of thinking? Did the lessons delivered to girls about what is and isn’t natural, normal, leave these circuits less sturdy from early on? And broaden opposing tracks, channels of serotonin that rush to quell unacceptable impulse?
    “I surreptitiously gaze at him from beneath my lashes as he stands in line waiting to be served. I could watch him all day. He’s tall, broad shouldered, and slim, and the way those pants hang from his hips.”
    Wendy had just read Fifty Shades of Grey , the first book in the trilogy of erotica that was approaching, in America, twenty million copies sold, that was breaking records for weekly sales rates, that Wendy and so many others labeled and laughed about as “mommy porn.” It wasn’t her usual reading. She took in scenes like this as Anastasia, the heroine, recounts the beginnings of her sadomasochistic affair with Christian, his manner reticent and self-possessed, his fingers “graceful,” all of him “heart-stoppingly beautiful.”
    “ ‘Does this mean you’re going to make love to me tonight, Christian?’ ”
    “ ‘No, Anastasia, it doesn’t. First, I don’t make love. I fuck . . . hard.’ ”
    And, soon, like this:
    “I come instantly, again and again, falling apart beneath him as he continues to slam deliciously into me.”
    And, later, like this, with Christian commanding her, “ ‘Hold out your hands in front as if you’re praying.’ . . . He takes a cable tie and fastens it around my wrists, tightening the plastic. ‘Hold onto the post,’ he says. . . . He stands behind me and grasps my hips. . . . He smacks me across my behind with his hand. . . . ‘Part your legs.’ . . . He reaches over me and grabs my braid near the end and winds it around his wrist to my nape, holding my head in place. Very slowly he eases into me, pulling my hair at the same time. . . . His other hand grabs my hip, holding tight, and then he slams into me, jolting me forward. . . . I grip the post harder. . . . He continues his merciless onslaught. . . . My scalp is getting sore from his tugging my hair. . . . I fear my orgasm. . . . If I come I’ll collapse. . . . His breathing harsh . . . slamming really deep . . . my name on his lips. . . . I become all body and spiraling sensation and sweet, sweet release, and then completely and utterly mindless.”
    While Wendy read on her iPad, a storm knocked out power on her block for a week; this jumbled her family’s routines and left them sleeping at a neighbor’s house, so there was no telling, she said, whether the book would have accomplished what Flibanserin and her first set of EB pills didn’t, whether some of the quickening it caused would have seeped into her feelings for her husband. That week, her life was too much of a mess. She guessed that Fifty Shades would have accomplished something, if the circumstances had been different—maybe not all she hoped for from the drugs, but something.
    Meana—as Christian’s self-possession gave way to “groaning,” “slamming,” and as Anastasia, bound, bent, became purely object—lay close. But I was thinking of Pfaus’s perspective. “Dopamine, dopamine, dopamine,” he said about the book’s impact. “ Fifty Shades is activating the whole neurochemical soup of wanting.” For Wendy, it was like a series of injections, lasting hours, into a mind that habitually kept fantasy and its neural effects at bay.
    And Pfaus added, “Dendrites.” These are the gossamer-like tentacles that link neural fibers in our brains. Our experiences can make these tentacles grow more dense, just as plant life thickens in rich soil, and this flourishing, he explained, means “neural networks are enhanced, more sensitized, more capable of being activated.” It was possible to imagine that if, for Wendy, devouring the book led to devouring the trilogy, and if this led to more fantasy, if men on the street with fabulous shoulders and hips induced flares of lust, then, over time, “dendritic arborization” might increase and Wendy might find herself at least a bit more eager for her husband, even if his shoulders weren’t as broad and his hips weren’t as