She was 17. He was 47. #MeToo changed how she thinks of their relationship

By Terry Gross

Tuesday, July 9, 2024 • 1:32 PM EDT

In 2017, when women across the globe were sharing their stories of sexual abuse and sexual harassment as part of the #MeToo movement, writer Jill Ciment had a realization: "My MeToo story is my husband."

Ciment met her husband, artist Arnold Mesches, in the 1970s. At the time of their first kiss, he was a married 47-year-old father of two; she was 17 and his art student. In her 1996 memoir, Half a Life, Ciment described herself as the one who pursued Mesches, but in her new memoir, Consent, she reconsiders their dynamic — and the origin story of their marriage, which lasted until Mesches' death in 2016.

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In Consent, Ciment writes that it was Mesches who initiated their first kiss — a story that is in direct contrast with her earlier recounting: "I think I told it that way [in the first memoir] not so much to protect Arnold or my marriage, but more to make me a young, willful woman who went after something and got it — not as someone who was a victim," Ciment says.

But now, as Ciment looks back on her 45-year marriage, she's left wondering: Can a relationship that begins with such a clear power imbalance, where one person is legally underage, ever be considered consensual? She notes that attitudes regarding consent have shifted dramatically since she and Mesches met.

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"In 1970, he would have been a silver fox and I would have been the coolest girl on the block because I kissed my art teacher," she says. But, she adds, "Today you would probably use the word sexual aggressor, maybe even predator."

"It's a very complex thing," Ciment says. "Do I think he did something wrong? Yeah. I mean, if I saw men today 47 going after a 17 year old, I would intervene. However, it wasn't a time when people intervened. ... Would I do it differently today? Not for a second."

Interview highlights

On why she wrote that she had initiated her relationship with Mesches in Half a Life

In the most basic sense, I think that I wanted to empower myself. I didn't want to be telling a story that was about the older man going after the younger woman. That had been the trope of almost every novel and movie that came out from 1970 to 1990, whether it was [Italian director Bernardo] Bertolucci or [the novelist] Philip Roth. So I wanted to make myself who I really felt at least then, that I had that kind of agency to be the sexual aggressor, because I felt that was more of the truth to what I was telling. Is that really the truth? I don't know.

On Mesches being married with kids when the relationship began

I came from such a broken family. The whole family, my older brother and me and my mother threw my father out because he was so intolerable to live with. And so I just didn't see marriage as what I see it now, which is this huge commitment of two people to go through the trials and tribulations of life. I just saw it as this thing that kind of ended in a mess. I just had no idea of the damage that I was doing to another family at 17. That's as simple as I could put it.

On whether or not she thought about how their age gap would impact their marriage

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I would say at 17, I did not think about that, because it's inconceivable at that age to imagine growing old. At 30, I probably gave it some thought. But Arnold was a really vital man, so he was able to keep up with me. Now that I'm 71 and ... I get exhausted when I do all the things that 71 year olds do, I start thinking: How did I not notice when I was 40 how tired he must have been? And I was oblivious to it. And one of the things that is so interesting about aging myself now is that I try to imagine: How did he keep up with a 40 year old? It's much more amazing to me now than it was when I was the 40 year old.

At a certain point, you realize this person is going to die away before you, and that knowledge changes the way in which you view your future. And it's both good and bad, like everything else. I mean, in one way you think to yourself, "OK, I will start my life again in my 60s, if he lives to be 90," and at the same time you think to yourself, "How can I start my life again at 60?" So it makes the end of our relationship much more precious. If you have a sick partner, for example, a partner who has cancer, suddenly the years that they have cancer before they die become kind of precious to you, because they're finite. And I think that was a huge lesson for me to learn. And I think that's why the marriage continued to have that kind of intensity, because we knew it was going to come to an end.

On becoming equals later in the relationship

It started to change at CalArts. So I would even say in my early 20s, simply because he may have known more about art, but I knew more about the avant garde. And so that was my sort of ace in a hole to become his equal. You know, I think as the relationship evolved, we traded roles as both mentor and student. We were very involved in each other's work. I felt free to pick up a paintbrush and paint over on top of his painting to show him what I thought needed to be done. And he felt empowered to cross off or throw out chapters that he didn't think were working for me. Obviously we waited for the other person’s permission. It was a very collaborative relationship. And so I think it balanced itself out for many, many years. And then the man painted 'til a week before he died. So it kept going.

On becoming old overnight when Arnold died

When you're living with somebody who's so much older than you, you are the person who always has more energy, and you are the person who is always the one who looks better, even when you look horrible. And suddenly, without him, I am my age without any kind of context. My age was always in relationship to his age. And suddenly, when he died, I found myself to be this age. And the most profound thing about growing old without him is understanding what he had been through that I couldn't even perceive. And that, to me, I find quite fascinating.

On meeting her second husband, Martino, on match.com

I was with Arnold since I was a child. [After his death] I just had this extraordinary experience. I met someone and I'm remarried. … There's not much of an age gap between us. This is the saddest thing: I've never known a young man. Because when I met [Martino], he was already 70. So I've never had the experience of dating a young man. So I guess that's not going to be part of my life story.

Heidi Saman and Thea Chaloner produced and edited this interview for broadcast. Bridget Bentz, Molly Seavy-Nesper and Meghan Sullivan adapted it for the web.

Transcript

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. When a 47-year-old man has a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old girl who is his art student, can you call the relationship consensual, even if she thinks she's madly in love with him? What if he leaves his wife and two children to marry the student? What if they stay married until his death at the age of 93? That former 17-year-old is my guest, Jill Ciment. She's now an established novelist and memoirist, recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship and a Guggenheim fellowship and a professor emeritus at the University of Florida in Gainesville. The questions I just asked are among the many questions she asked herself in her new memoir, "Consent." It's in part a reflection and critique of her previous memoir, "Half A Life," which was published in the mid-1990s when she was in her mid-40s.

In "Half A Life," she described herself as the aggressor, the one who initiated the first kiss and started the relationship. In her new memoir, "Consent," she confesses it was her future husband, Arnold Mesches, who started it. He looked down her blouse, said he wished she were older and kissed her. Their relationship started in 1970. She wonders, having seriously reflected on the #MeeToo movement, if that has rewritten the story of her marriage and whether the story's ending can excuse its beginning.

Jill Ciment, welcome to FRESH AIR. I really love this memoir, what you write about and how you write about it. What made you question how you told the story of the beginning of your relationship in the previous memoir "Half A Life"?

JILL CIMENT: Well, I mean, when I finished "Half A Life," I originally thought to myself, this would be really interesting to revisit this material in years to come. I always thought that would be a really interesting way in which to do memoir, not to go on with the story, but to go on with your life and then reevaluate the story. But that remained an abstraction in my life because I didn't have a new way to look at that material. And then as the #MeeToo movement began to accelerate, it started to, you know, evoke all kinds of memories for me.

I mean, one of the things is there's not a woman my age - I'm 71 - who doesn't have one #MeeToo story or a hundred #MeeToo stories. And I started to realize that my #MeeToo story is my husband. And that changed the entire dynamic of how I view back. I mean, because when everyone else was telling their #MeeToo stories, they went on to have different mates. And my mate was initially one of those stories that are very risque and certainly not acceptable today. So that was one of the things that prompted me to do it.

GROSS: So I want you to compare the first time you tell the story in your memoir "Half A Life" and how you tell it now in "Consent," because you compare the two stories in your new memoir. So let's start with how you told the story in the mid-'90s, in your memoir "Half A Life." Would you read an excerpt of that? And this is the story of how the relationship began. You're taking an art class with your future husband, Arnold. And at the last day of the semester, all the students have left. You've lingered, and you walk in, back into the classroom.

CIMENT: (Reading) I unbuttoned the top three buttons of my peasant blouse, crossed the ink-splattered floor and kissed him. He kissed me back, then stopped himself. I had no precedent to go on except "Valley Of The Dolls" and "Peyton Place." I asked him if he would sleep with me. He looked stunned. I mustered all my nerve and asked again. Maybe we should talk, he said. I shook my head no. Sweetheart, I can't sleep with you. I'd like to but I can't. I don't see why not, I said. I honestly didn't. For one thing, I could be arrested, he smiled, trying to make light of things. I had no sense of humor. I won't tell anyone, I promised. He put his hand on my cheek. He didn't caress me. He simply pressed his hand against my skin. It wouldn't be fair to you.

GROSS: All right, so that's how you told it the first time around. And after considering the #MeToo movement and sexual harassment and the language that we use today, you rethought the beginning of the story. And you told it in a way that you thought was more honest. So I'm going to ask you to read that version of the story that you write in your new memoir, "Consent."

CIMENT: (Reading) Halfway through the semester I caught him looking down my blouse, and that was more thrilling to me than the praise. I had been a late developer, and the breasts were new to me. No one wore a bra in those days, 1970. On the last night of class, I stayed after the others left to get his advice about my upcoming New York move. He knew artists in the city who might need an assistant. In his private studio adjacent to the classroom, he drew me to him, and I went willingly. I am purposely using the tired drew me to him, because that was how my 17-year-old self, whose scant sexual knowledge came from "Valley Of The Dolls," might've described his action, and because to pull someone by physical touch makes him the aggressor. Me too?

He was 47, married for 25 unfaithful years. He had two children, a daughter my age and a son two years older. His once ascending career as a social realist painter had stalled, and he now sold commercial serigraphs his younger self would have found appalling. He kissed me. I could have screamed. I could have slapped him. But what 17-year-old is prepared to slap a 47-year-old man she had fantasized about for the previous six months? I fervently kissed him back. I had imagined his kiss ever since he looked down my blouse. But did I have the agency to consent?

GROSS: OK, so we've heard two different versions of how you first started an intimate relationship with your then 30 year older than you art teacher. Why do you think in the first version of the story, when you told it in your previous memoir, that you made yourself the person who initiated that first kiss, who walked into the classroom, unbuttoned the top three buttons of your blouse and approached him? Why did you tell it that way?

CIMENT: You know, that's an excellent question. I've asked myself that numerous times. You know, I think - in the most basic sense, I think that I wanted to empower myself. I didn't want to be telling a story that was about the older man going after the younger woman. That had been the trope of almost every novel and movie that came out from 1970-1990, whether it was Bertolucci or Philip Roth.

So I wanted to make myself who I really felt, at least then, that I had that kind of agency to be the sexual aggressor, because I felt that was more of the truth to what I was telling. Is that really the truth? I don't know. But it felt at that time that I was doing something that made how we got together a more honest way of telling, because again, it was something I really, really wanted. So it wasn't something that was being forced on me. And at the same time, I mean, now looking back at it, it's much more complex than that.

But the first time I think I told it that way, not so much to protect Arnold or my marriage but more to make me a young willful woman who went after something and got it, not as someone who was a victim.

GROSS: Either way you look at that story, he was wrong. You know, if he initiated it, he was wrong. If you initiated it, he was wrong to go along with it. So when you think of it that way, how does it change your understanding of your late husband?

CIMENT: You know, it's a very complex thing. I mean, you have to understand that those first few days are just part of a 45-year marriage. So in proportion to the rest of the marriage, it's very different when you're living it. Do I think he did something wrong? Yeah. I mean, if I saw a man today, 47 going after a 17-year-old, I would intervene. However, it wasn't a time when people intervened, and I'm not in any way saying that what he did wasn't wrong, but there was no context for us to know that it was wrong. I mean, except the law. Well, I guess that's a good context.

GROSS: Because that you were 17, the age of consent in California, where you were, was 18. So it was actually illegal (laughter).

CIMENT: It was. I know. Exactly. Again, it was - it was such a different time. But again, it doesn't dismiss what he did, in any way shape or form.

GROSS: Your husband died in 2016 at the age of 93. Could you have only written this memoir after his death? What - do you think it would have been very upsetting to him if you told the second version of the story while he was alive, where he is the aggressor?

CIMENT: You know, I don't think it would have been upsetting to him in the sense that I think he was a deep feminist, and I think that he - had he lived through the whole #MeToo movement, I think he might have reevaluated his position or his actions. You know, I tried to imagine what he would think of this new memoir. I do it in the book, and it's - he was so devoted to art that if he thought this book was doing something good, he would have been willing to have been chastisized (ph) for what he'd done. So I don't think he would have been - what he would have been upset about is me talking about him being, you know, a failed artist at a certain point in his life. I think that would have bothered him more than him being a sexual aggressor to me.

GROSS: You write about the language and how the language has changed in describing the beginning of that relationship. So I'd like you to compare the words that would have been used to describe Arnold, your future husband, and the experience of you being 17 and him being 47 when the relationship started. So compare the language that you would have thought about it in 1970 when you had that first kiss to the language you thought about in the mid-'90s when you wrote your previous memoir, and the language that you think about now.

CIMENT: Well, I mean, in 1970, he would have been a silver fox, and I would have been the coolest girl on the block because I kissed my art teacher. In 1995, this is - remember, the '90s are sandwiched between Anita Hill, the Anita Hill hearing, and Clinton and the blue dress. And so I think in the middle, I would have thought of him more as you would have thought of Clinton, as a Casanova, someone who is a lech (ph). You know, the words they used to describe Monica Lewinsky was bimbo and vixen, and they did the same thing to Anita Hill so that there was a language that implied that the woman was responsible just because she had a sexuality. And then if you go to today, you know, you would probably use the word sexual aggressor, maybe even predator. The part for me that bothers me is, I can't imagine myself ever thinking of myself as a victim. It's hard to think of a predator if you don't think of yourself as a victim. And I don't think of myself as a survivor. I think this was a moment in my life that was wrong, and yet it was really liberating for me.

GROSS: Was it wrong in the long run because the marriage lasted so long?

CIMENT: Well, that's the question. I mean, it's not an answerable question. It's a rhetorical question. There's no way to know. I mean, would I do it differently today? Not for a second. So it's hard to know how to define those two things.

GROSS: All right, let me reintroduce you. My guest is novelist and memoirist Jill Ciment. Her new memoir is called "Consent." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF ULTRALUST'S "MISSING YOU")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Jill Ciment. Her new memoir, "Consent," begins when she was 17 and fell in love and had a sexual relationship with her married art teacher. He was 47, 30 years older than her. Even though he epitomized her romantic archetype and she wanted the relationship, she now wonders if a 17-year-old is capable of consent and if in today's language, he would have been considered a predator.

Arnold was married with two children when you met. At what point did you find that out?

CIMENT: Oh, I knew that right from the very beginning because...

GROSS: Oh, right. Because you met his wife at the gallery.

CIMENT: ...I met his wife at this gallery, yeah.

GROSS: Right, right, right. So you knew he was married and knew he had two children. What did that mean to you, that he would be having an affair while he had a family?

CIMENT: You know, I came from such a broken family. My father - my - actually the whole family, my older brother and me and my mother, threw my father out because he was so intolerable to live with. And so, you know, I just didn't see marriage as what I see it now, which is this huge commitment of two people to go through the trials and tribulations of life. I just saw it as this thing that kind of ended in a mess. So it wasn't something that I - I just had no idea of the damage that I was doing to another family at 17. That's as simple as I could put it.

GROSS: Most 17-year-olds would find it gross to kiss a middle-aged man, let alone to have sex with him. But for you, you say, he was your romantic archetype. Why was your romantic archetype middle-aged?

CIMENT: You know, I mean, it's so apparent to me now. It wasn't apparent to me when I wrote "Half A Life," and it certainly wasn't apparent to me when I was 17. You know, I was craving to know what it was like to be loved by an older man. I mean, my father was - I mean, now I can say he was autistic because now we look at these behavioral things and be able to classify them. But in those days, he was just distant and insane. And so - and I watched other girls have the protection of the father. And I think I just wanted to go out and do that. And I don't think I just did it for myself. I think I did it for my family to find a kind of stable man that would be within the family to help us because we were so lost. So I don't think it was - I mean, yes, it's Oedipal and it's Freudian and it's all those things, but I think it was also healing. And I think that's one of the reasons I did it.

GROSS: You gave him an ultimatum pretty early on in your relationship that he needed to leave his wife in two weeks or else. What or else did you have in mind?

CIMENT: I have no idea what else. I mean, it was...

GROSS: (Laughter) OK.

CIMENT: I mean, God knows what that what else was, but it's only as a child could do it. My mom at the time was also seeing a married man. And so was her best friend. And I remember I would come home and I would say to both of those women who were having, like, you know, the kind of trials and tribulations of dating married men. And I would say, I'm going to give him an ultimatum, and they would look at me, stunned, OK, because they knew what marriage and having children and having a family life is like. But at 17, it's easy to give ultimatums.

GROSS: But he followed through on it. He left his wife in two weeks. And you know, I think you were both kind of great mirrors for each other because when he looked at you, he saw himself as a great mentor, as a really great painter, and as sexy. And when you looked at him, you saw him seeing you as very attractive, very sexual, very talented. He took you really seriously as a young painter, and he would give you really good critiques of your work, and you felt like you knew he was being honest because he gave you praise, but also gave you criticism in the way that you do when you take somebody's work really seriously.

CIMENT: Yeah, no, that was - it was really - I mean, it was fundamental for me, having the confidence not just to become a painter, but to become a writer. I mean, that was a huge leap for me. I was - I'm a high school dropout. I'm dyslexic. And so for me to have the courage to become a writer under those circumstances, really sort of required - I mean, I guess you could have had it with parents who believe in you, but I needed a lover who believed in me in order to make that jump.

GROSS: Do you think he wanted a divorce before he met you, but didn't see the doorway out?

CIMENT: I think that's probably true of almost everyone who has an affair. So yes, I do believe that. I - you know, he had a mistress. I wasn't - you know, he had to break up with both his mistress and his wife. And it was a mistress he had for seven years. So it wasn't a short-term thing. She was appropriate age mistress. She was also married. So I think that I was a catalyst for the end of a marriage, not necessarily the cause of it.

GROSS: Right. But that leads to another question. I mean, the mistress that he had for seven years, there were other affairs before that while he was married, including with students. Did you wonder when you were 17 or maybe you didn't even know about this, would he have affairs? If he had an affair with you, who else would he have an affair with even when you were in a relationship with him?

CIMENT: You know, I never worried about it, which may be naive on my part, but I was 17. And you know, there is a kind of power at 17 that you you lose as you get older, which is that you, you know, it's it's the first inkling for a woman that she has power over men because she has sexuality. It's a very powerful lesson for a young girl to understand. And I think that was like my Superman suit. You know, I thought he would never play around on me because I was young.

GROSS: Well, I think we have to take another break here. So, let me reintroduce you. If you're just joining us. My guest is writer Jill Ciment. Her new memoir is called "Consent." We'll be right back after we take a short break. I am Terry Gross. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross. Let's get back to my interview with Jill Ciment. Her new memoir "Consent" begins when she was 17, fell in love with and had a sexual relationship with her married art teacher. He was 47, 30 years older than her. Even though he epitomized her romantic archetype and she wanted the relationship, she now wonders if a 17-year-old is capable of consent, and if in today's language, he would be considered a predator. The memoir is in part a critique of the memoir she published in the mid-'90s when she described herself as the person who initiated their first kiss. In her new book "Consent," she admits he initiated the kiss. They married and stayed together until his death at the age of 93 in 2016. But she wonders if the story's ending can excuse how it began.

When you were 17, and you were so serious about your relationship with your art teacher, who became your husband, did you ever think about what it would mean when you were 30 and he was 60, or when you were 40, and he was 70, or when you were 60 and he would be 90?

CIMENT: I would say at 17, I did not think about that because it's inconceivable at that age to imagine growing old. At 30, I probably gave it some thought, but Arnold was a really vital man. So you know, he was able to keep up with me. Now that I'm 71, OK, and I think to myself, you know, I get exhausted and I do all the things that 71-year-olds do, I start thinking, how did I not notice when I was 40, how tired he must have been, and I was oblivious to it. And one of the things that, you know, is so interesting about aging myself now is that I tried to imagine, how did he keep up with a 40-year-old? I mean, it's much more amazing to me now than it was when I was the 40-year-old.

At a certain point, you realize this person is going to die way before you, and that knowledge changes the way in which you view your future. And It's both good and bad like everything else. I mean, in one way, you think to yourself, OK, I will start my life again in my 60s if he lives to be 90, and at the same time, you think to yourself, how can I start my life again at 60? So it gives a kind of - it makes the end of our relationship much more precious.

CIMENT: As anyone - if you have a sick partner, for example, a partner who has cancer, suddenly the years that they have cancer before they die become kind of precious to you because you know they're finite. I think that was a huge lesson for me to learn. I think that's why the marriage continued to have that kind of intensity because we knew it was going to come to an end.

GROSS: But you also had to be something of a caregiver. When you were writing your previous memoir and you were in your 40s and he was in his 70s, while you were writing that book, he had had pneumonia twice, a cataract surgery that nearly blinded him. It did briefly blind him, but he got his sight back. He had a prostate infection that was only controlled but never cured, and a debilitating case of shingles and a neuralgia that resulted from it. So what was it like for you in your 40s to become a caregiver for somebody in their 70s? And I should mention here, once when you were out with him sitting on a bench, a homeless woman came up to you, looking at you and looking to your older husband, and said to you, how much do you get paid to take care of him? Assuming that you were, like, a professional caregiver, not his wife.

CIMENT: You know, when I was writing "Half A Life," you know, you just - people can really hide all kinds of really blatant things just by not wanting to see them. And I don't think I really understood that I was a caretaker until he hit his 80s. And then, you know, the 80s - and again, he was really vital. I mean, we traveled all over the world. We hiked. We did, you know, all sorts of activities. But the 80s was the first hint that I would have to curtail my own life in order to take care of him.

GROSS: And how did you feel about that? It can be very tender, but it can also lead to a certain amount of resentment because you're in your prime as a writer, and you didn't necessarily have the time you wanted for yourself or your own life.

CIMENT: You know, it's - I didn't have children, so I got to have all those months and years that would have been caretaking for children. You know, I loved the man and caretaking for someone that you love - I mean, did I get - I mean, there was a kind of anger and frustration and exhaustion that went into caretaking. But I was also caretaking for my mother and my stepfather. So it was, you know, a real balancing act. And by the time those two people died, and I just was caretaking for Arnold, it felt almost like a relief, quite frankly.

GROSS: When he died, who did you write down when you were asked for, say, at the doctor's office, and you were asked for your emergency contact?

CIMENT: It was - that was - I mean, so many things after he died was such a strange experience that I'm sure thousands and, you know, hundreds of thousands of people go through, which is - you know, I wrote down my brother, who is - I'm very close to for an emergency contact, but I would say the hardest thing after losing him was grocery shopping. The idea that you would go into - I couldn't - I would go into grocery stores and just stand there because the idea of buying, you know, two pieces of chicken as opposed to one or not being able to bring home something that tastes good that you know your lover loves. It would just - that was where I would be immobilized. It was the grocery store.

GROSS: Well, let's take another short break here. If you're just joining us, my guest is novelist and memoirist Jill Ciment. Her new memoir is called "Consent." We'll be right back. This is FRESH AIR.

(SOUNDBITE OF KEVIN EUBANKS' "POET")

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. Let's get back to my interview with Jill Ciment. Her new memoir, "Consent," begins when she was 17 and fell in love with and had a sexual relationship with her married art teacher. He was 47, 30 years older than her. They ended up being married until his death at the age of 93.

When the relationship started with your art teacher, who became your husband, he was your mentor. I mean, he learned some things from you, but he was more of the mentor because he was the older man. He had more life experience. He was already an art teacher. He knew more about art than you did for no other reason than the virtue of his age. But, you know, he'd lived. So at what point did the relationship start to change or you no longer needed him to be a mentor and you wanted to be equals?

CIMENT: I would say probably 10 years into the relationship - probably my mid-20s.

GROSS: So you would have been 27, and he would have been around 57.

CIMENT: Right. I would say at that point - I mean, it started to change at CalArts, so I would even say in my early 20s, simply because he may have known more about art, but I knew more about the avant-garde. And so that was my sort of ace in a hole to become his equal. You know, I think as the relationship evolved, we traded roles as both mentor and student. We were very involved in each other's work. I mean, I felt free to pick up a paint brush and paint over on top of his painting to show him what I thought needed to be done. And he felt empowered to, you know, cross off or throw out chapters that he didn't think were working for me. I mean, obviously, we waited for the other person's permission. It was a very collaborative relationship.

CIMENT: And so I think it balanced itself out for many, many years. And then the man painted till a week before he died. So it kept going.

GROSS: You don't have children.

CIMENT: No, I do not have children.

GROSS: At first, I was thinking, well, maybe you don't have children because Arnold already had two children. But then I read that you always knew you didn't want to have children. You knew it as a child that you didn't want to have children. Can you talk about why?

CIMENT: You know, I love kids. I'm not - you know, I have a lot of children in my life. I have two wonderful grandkids. Now I have a great-granddaughter.

GROSS: Grandchildren from your husband's first marriage.

CIMENT: From my husband, yes. I mean, they're the age that my children would have been if I had had children. So when I was at CalArts, I remember a lot of the older women who were professors there kind of warning us not to have children if you wanted to be an artist. You know, I watched my mother struggle with these kids. And, you know, I raised my younger brothers. I feel like that was an experience I sort of had, and I wanted to live a Bohemian life where I was free to make my art. I don't think I was the most stable young person in the world. And I don't know if I could have handled making art and having children. And for me, I think the imperative to make art was so strong that that became my choice. It doesn't mean people can't have children and make art. But, you know, it's doubly hard for a woman.

GROSS: I like to ask people who have made that choice, do you have any regrets?

CIMENT: No. I have no regrets about not having children. Again, if I didn't have a bunch of children I loved in my life, maybe. But, you know, I don't feel any biological need to have reproduced myself. So I'm thrilled to love other people's children.

GROSS: And I guess it wasn't an issue for your husband because he already had two children.

CIMENT: Yeah. Absolutely. I mean, it might have been a real big issue had I wanted children.

GROSS: Right. You were always 30 years younger than him. Like, obviously, that wasn't ever going to change (laughter)...

CIMENT: No (laughter).

GROSS: ...During the marriage. And you say that it preserved your sense of being young because no matter how old you got, he was always older, and by comparison, you were always young. And you were afraid that when he died, that you would suddenly be old. Can you talk a little bit more about that fear and how it actually turned out?

CIMENT: Well, the fear, I mean, the fear probably was just of loneliness and ending up alone in old age. How it turned out - you know, I did grow old overnight. I mean, I'm able now in a way that when you're living with somebody who's so much older than you, you are the person who always has more energy, and you are the person who is the one who looks better even when you look horrible. And suddenly without him, I am my age without any kind of context. Like my age was always in relationship to his age. And suddenly when he died, I found myself to be you know, this age, and the most profound thing about growing old without him is understanding what he had been through that I couldn't even perceive. And that to me, I find quite fascinating.

GROSS: Can I ask you about cleaning out his closets, figuring out not only in relationship to his work, but in relationship to everything he owned, what had lasting value that you wanted to keep and what you wanted to, like, put in the dumpster and have hauled away?

CIMENT: You know, I was so - I mean, after he died literally within a week, I - the only thing I kept of his was he had a T-shirt that had the menu of New York Noodletown on it that they had given him because he ate there every day. And I kept that. I kept a couple of little things, but no, I was pretty merciless. I even - you know, I just wanted - I don't know. I just threw it - most of it away. Most of it I gave to, of course, to Goodwill and stuff.

GROSS: Why were you merciless?

CIMENT: You know, I had been waiting for his death for so long that I - it was the only way I could control the environment that we had shared and turn it into my own environment. I thought, I've watched too many women, and I guess some men, but not - more women than men. And you go into their houses and the closet is still - you know, 20 years after the death, still filled with the person's clothes. And I just couldn't bear that.

GROSS: You know, you write that early on, when you were in your late teens, that you considered yourself a feminist but not that kind of feminist. When you said not that kind of feminist, what kind? What did you mean?

CIMENT: You know, again, when you go back to the '70s and feminism first came about, there was a kind of - not that there was two kinds of - there was many kinds of feminisms. But, you know, one of the things that - I gave so much power to men. I was so raised to give all the artistic and all the knowledge of power to men. And so when feminism was first coming out - I'm using CalArts - there was a feminist art program that was embedded in the art school there. And I remember, I mean, so foolishly looking down on it because it didn't have the approval of men. And we were so trained, women in those days, to think that men were - that was the level you wanted to reach and that the women's art program was of a different level.

Now, of course, I think it's insane what I thought. And I'm so happy that crafts are now being looked at as important art for both, you know, whether it's Indigenous people or whether it's women. But I bought into that whole idea of men being the standard by which you wanted to define yourself. And it's hard not to have done that. I mean, it's not like you went to an art history lecture and ever saw a woman's piece of art, let alone a Black person's piece of art. You only saw white men's pieces of art. That was all that was in museums. That was all that was on slideshows in art history. So I wanted to be part of that world. And the feminist art world that was just beginning to blossom seemed to me lesser because I was completely - the propaganda of men, you know, infected my mind.

GROSS: What kind of feminist do you consider yourself to be now?

CIMENT: You know, I consider myself a feminist that believes that women should have every single right that men have. And that also allows them to have choices, to stay home with their kids if they want, to work if they want, to do all the things that they want to do that's not only under the domain of men, but under their own domain.

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When your husband was old, you met a widow who told you don't waste any time rehearsing grief, you'll never get it right. And I think, you know, people who are married can't stop themselves from imagining what grief will be like in the near or distant future and mentally preparing themselves for it. I think people are that way with their parents, too, when their parents get older. Did you prepare yourself for grief? Did you rehearse grief and rehearse what it would feel like, imagine what it would feel like? And if so, how did that compare to the reality?

CIMENT: I don't think I rehearsed grief in that way. I think that one of the things that I did was I watched women who had lost their husbands and saw where they made mistakes that they regretted later on and where they were able to really build up a really amazing life without their husbands. And, you know, one reason that I decided to go on match.com was I had talked to a number of people who had been widowed in their 60s, and that was one of their regrets, that they didn't go out and see if they could find love again. So that was something that was - by watching these older women and seeing what they were going to go through, I kind of prepared myself and made certain decisions.

GROSS: So you made certain decisions before your husband died?

CIMENT: That's right.

GROSS: Your husband lived past the age of being sexual. I think most people in their 90s who are in poor health are no longer sexually active. You were young enough to still be sexually active. When sex started to fade from the relationship because of his age, what was that like for you, if you don't mind my asking? And I realize you might mind.

CIMENT: I'm not someone who's embarrassed by these things, so I'm fine to talk about it. I would say we had a loving sexual life until he turned 90. And in the last three years, you know, you just - you're taking care of a body that's failing. You have no - it removes sex as something you even want. I mean, one reason I think that it was so interesting to have another relationship afterward, my partner, he lost his wife just a few months before I lost Arnold after a long time. And I think one of the big binding things in our relationship is we had been holding someone who was dying, and now suddenly we were holding somebody who was vital and alive.

GROSS: When your husband died - and you were 63 - how did you feel about the possibility of ever having another intimate relationship? I ask this in part because I have met women whose husbands died of illness, of, like, you know, a fairly long illness. And I've heard them say, I would never have an intimate relationship again for two reasons. I couldn't endure that kind of caregiving again, and I couldn't endure the grief that I experienced when my husband died. And I'm wondering if you experienced something like that. I'm wondering what you did experience in terms of looking at your future and whether you wanted a partner in your future or not.

CIMENT: Well, the first thing was, you know, when he died, I was in the middle of a book called "The Body In Question." And one of the things that I did in "The Body In Question" is I knew Arnold would die while I was writing it because I started when he was 90, and it takes five years to write a book, so there was a good shot he would die. And so in that book, I put in the death of the husband so that I would have a way to channel my grief. And so for about a year and a half after his death, that was where I channeled all my grief was into that book. And then when that book was finished, I decided to go on match.com and see what the world held for me. And I had a fascinating experience in match.com. I was in central Florida, and you can't even imagine the available men here, but I met a wonderful man.

GROSS: What do you mean by that?

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Interpret that.

CIMENT: OK, they were all - you know, it's central Florida. And basically, most of the men here, the only time they've had a photo taken of them is when they're holding a fish. So...

GROSS: (Laughter).

CIMENT: You know, or on their hog, you know? And so - but I had never dated. I was with Arnold since I was a child. So, you know, I just had this extraordinary experience. I met someone and I'm remarried.

GROSS: Oh, really?

CIMENT: Or we're really together. Yeah. Not married, but...

GROSS: You don't mention that in your book.

CIMENT: It wasn't, you know, I ended - the book ends, you know, I don't even go to Arnold's death because I felt like I covered that in the previous book. And so I guess if I write another book, I will talk about my experience of dating in central Florida in my late 60s.

GROSS: Does he fish?

CIMENT: No, he does not fish. He's a New Yorker.

GROSS: OK.

(LAUGHTER)

GROSS: Can I ask how old he is?

CIMENT: He is age appropriate. He's a few years older than me.

GROSS: How does that...

CIMENT: His name is Martino.

GROSS: Oh, that's who you dedicate the book to. I was wondering who that was.

CIMENT: Yes, yeah.

GROSS: Oh, OK. So how does the experience of having somebody who's kind of your age compare to being 30 years younger than your spouse?

CIMENT: You know, because I'm now - you know, it's a close age, there's not much of an age gap between us - you know, this is the saddest thing. I've never known a young man, because when I met Martino, he was already 70. So I've never had the experience of dating a young man, so I guess that's not going to be part of my life story.

GROSS: Well, Jill Ciment, I'm really grateful to you for sharing so much of your life with us. Thank you so much.

CIMENT: Thank you for having me. This has been just delightful.

GROSS: Jill Ciment's new memoir is called "Consent." Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll talk about the biggest financial Ponzi scheme in history. My guest will be investigative financial journalist Richard Behar. His new book about Bernie Madoff is based on interviews with FBI agents, Wall Street insiders and over 50 interviews with and hundreds of e-mails from Madoff himself while he was in prison. We'll hear excerpts of those interviews. I hope you'll join us. To keep up with what's on the show and get highlights of our interviews, follow us on Instagram at @nprfreshair.

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GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Ann Marie Baldonado, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Thea Chaloner, Susan Nyakundi and Joel Wolfram. Our digital media producer is Molly Seavy-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. Our co-host is Tonya Mosley. I'm Terry Gross.

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