THE DRY SEASON

A year of celibacy changes a queer memoirist’s life.

After two decades of back-to-back romantic relationships, Febos knew she needed a change. She decided to trade in years of serial monogamy for temporary celibacy, which she defines as abstaining from sex and dating. She writes, “It wasn’t happiness, exactly, that I sought when I decided to spend this time celibate. I had just gotten so tired.” During this time, she makes a 12-step-style “inventory” of her past relationships in which she reflects on the ways in which she treated her past partners. When she shared this inventory with someone she had long known—“a kind of ‘spiritual director’”—the person declared Febos “a user” of people, a diagnosis whose accuracy ultimately provided Febos with both direction and a sense of relief. The author peppers her narrative with research about other women who have chosen celibacy as a route to self-fulfillment and liberation, including Virginia Woolf, whose celibacy enabled her to focus on her art; Benedictine abbess Hildegard von Bingen, whom Febos describes as “empowered in ways people recognize as masculine”; and the beguines, “orders of religious laywomen” who gave up sex to escape “the servitude of marriage and motherhood.” Despite uncovering hard truths about herself, Febos describes these months of celibacy as some of “the happiest of my life,” mainly because they provide her with the time and space she needs to focus on herself and, most importantly to the author, her art. Although a book about abstention, at its essence this story is about understanding, reclaiming, and celebrating pleasure, rendered sublimely and with wit.

A gorgeous and thought-provoking memoir about how celibacy can teach us about love.