Beyond My Control: Forbidden Fantasies in an Uncensored Age (39 page)

I have written elsewhere that the day I finished
My Secret Garden
I stood up, looked at my manuscript, and said aloud, “Why in God’s name are women so profoundly guilty about having fantasies, just
thinking
about sex?” I went to the fridge, found a frozen Snickers (my favorite), and decided to walk around Central Park.

I have never questioned the absolute sureness that if I hadn’t written
My Secret Garden,
none of the subsequent books I wrote would have been written. Our sexuality—yours, mine—is a river that runs through us. It feeds every part of us if we let it, which is why I return to this subject every few years.

Now, dear readers, I think I’ll get that Snickers and take my dog Peter (named after my dear friend Peter Allen) for a walk around Central Park.

a B o u T T h e a u T h o r

Nancy Friday published her first book,
My Secret Garden,
in 1973. A collection of interviews with women discussing their sexuality and fantasies, it became a huge bestseller. Friday’s subsequent books—including
Men in Love
;
My Mother, My Self
; and
Women on Top—
cover topics ranging from mothers and daughters to jealousy to feminism.

The bestselling author of
My Secret Garden
exposes the wild and sexy fantasies that many of us have but are afraid to share.

For over thirty years,
Nancy Friday has written about eros, love, beauty, and seduction. Now she returns to the territory she pioneered during the sexual revolution—exploring

our most taboo sexual desires. In a contemporary world where women are formidable partners in the erotic dance and no topic seems out of bounds, Friday breaks into a still-forbidden world of lust, power, and pleasure.

Collecting fantasies from dozens of women and, for the first time, men, Friday explores the wildest corners of our imagination.
Beyond My Control: Forbidden Fantasies in an Uncensored Age
shows that our fantasies are not compensation for a “missing” sex life but are a critical component of our fullest selves, the secret desires that yearn to soar.

Praise for Nancy Friday

“YOU’LL BLUSH, YOUR PULSE WILL RACE.”

—New York Times

Sex/Self-Help
$15.00

$16.99

ISBN-13: 978-1-4022-1854-5
£7.9

ISBN-10: 1-4022-1854-0

U.S. CAN 9 UK

EAN

ISBN-13: 978-1-4022-2399-0

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