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Perfect Strangers: A Memoir of the Swinging 70's
PERFECT A Memoir of the Swinging 70’s, is an upbeat, tongue-in-cheek account of becoming sexually liberated and personally empowered—via three-plus years of rampant promiscuity.
In 1974, I was twenty-nine, naïve, and deeply frustrated by my inability to achieve orgasm during intercourse with my husband, Paul. When I found him, naked and on top of my good friend, Cassandra, it wasn’t the infidelity that hurt the most—it was the sizzling sex they were engaged in that cut to my core. Damn, I thought, watching her orgasm for what seemed like hours. Twelve years of marriage. We were never that hot! With that, my life changed in an instant, and my erotic journey began.
I began dating, after splitting with Paul, hoping for another chance at happily ever after—but after a series of unsatisfying encounters, I gave up on love, and launched an all-out search for a sexually compatible perfect stranger.
PERFECT STRANGERS spotlights the sensitive issue of female sexual satisfaction. My adventures in the Land of Oz—otherwise known as mid-70s San Francisco—takes place in an era when casual sex seemed as easy as a handshake; but for a woman to achieve orgasm, vaginal or otherwise—well, good luck with that! My sex-positive tale touches on issues pertinent to countless women. My target audience is every woman who has ever faked an orgasm, every woman who has divorced, dated and struggled to start over, and every woman who has dared to live out a sexual fantasy—or dreamed of doing so.
In 1974, I was twenty-nine, naïve, and deeply frustrated by my inability to achieve orgasm during intercourse with my husband, Paul. When I found him, naked and on top of my good friend, Cassandra, it wasn’t the infidelity that hurt the most—it was the sizzling sex they were engaged in that cut to my core. Damn, I thought, watching her orgasm for what seemed like hours. Twelve years of marriage. We were never that hot! With that, my life changed in an instant, and my erotic journey began.
I began dating, after splitting with Paul, hoping for another chance at happily ever after—but after a series of unsatisfying encounters, I gave up on love, and launched an all-out search for a sexually compatible perfect stranger.
PERFECT STRANGERS spotlights the sensitive issue of female sexual satisfaction. My adventures in the Land of Oz—otherwise known as mid-70s San Francisco—takes place in an era when casual sex seemed as easy as a handshake; but for a woman to achieve orgasm, vaginal or otherwise—well, good luck with that! My sex-positive tale touches on issues pertinent to countless women. My target audience is every woman who has ever faked an orgasm, every woman who has divorced, dated and struggled to start over, and every woman who has dared to live out a sexual fantasy—or dreamed of doing so.
277 pages, Kindle Edition
Published April 19, 2018
7 people are currently reading
13 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy Freed
12 books10 followersAt 73, Dorothy Freed claims to be the oldest practicing erotica writer in the SF Bay area. This may or may not be true, but it’s her story and she’s sticking to it.
Dorothy Freed is a pseudonym of a writer who lives with her husband, two senior rescue dogs, and a formerly feral grand-cat in a coast-side community near San Francisco.
She combines the roles of being a humane human being, who stands up for animals and the natural world — with being a writer of sizzling hot erotica. Her stories are memoir based, inspired by her participation in the casual sex lifestyle, and later in the BDSM Scene.
Although Dorothy was led to believe that in her post-menopausal, estrogen deprived life, she would come to prefer cooking, hiking, or gardening to the allure of intimate encounters, this has fortunately proven to be untrue. She is still passionately interested in all things erotic: art, literature, films, and fantasies– not to mention hot personal interactions as opportunities arise. Her sexual life now spans over a half century, and against all odds and aside from age related restrictions imposed by her body, it continues to unfold.
Dorothy Freed is a pseudonym of a writer who lives with her husband, two senior rescue dogs, and a formerly feral grand-cat in a coast-side community near San Francisco.
She combines the roles of being a humane human being, who stands up for animals and the natural world — with being a writer of sizzling hot erotica. Her stories are memoir based, inspired by her participation in the casual sex lifestyle, and later in the BDSM Scene.
Although Dorothy was led to believe that in her post-menopausal, estrogen deprived life, she would come to prefer cooking, hiking, or gardening to the allure of intimate encounters, this has fortunately proven to be untrue. She is still passionately interested in all things erotic: art, literature, films, and fantasies– not to mention hot personal interactions as opportunities arise. Her sexual life now spans over a half century, and against all odds and aside from age related restrictions imposed by her body, it continues to unfold.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
January 4, 2020
You’d suppose the Swinging Seventies would be one long orgasm for a young woman like Dorothy, but you’d be wrong. After discovering her husband having sex with her good friend Cassandra – and her friend getting all the screaming orgasms Dorothy had been missing – she set out to chase down the elusive O.
That quest took her to San Francisco and resulted in a full-on liberation of her libido. At one time dating seven men and having sex with over a hundred during the next few years, Freed finally uncovered her true self and learned how to enjoy a fulfilling sex life.
A gritty, erotic and ultimately uplifting exploration of one woman’s search for the moaning of life. Recommended
That quest took her to San Francisco and resulted in a full-on liberation of her libido. At one time dating seven men and having sex with over a hundred during the next few years, Freed finally uncovered her true self and learned how to enjoy a fulfilling sex life.
A gritty, erotic and ultimately uplifting exploration of one woman’s search for the moaning of life. Recommended
June 10, 2018
When I grow up, I want to be as cool as Dorothy Freed. Well, that might be a tall order: no spring chicken any more, it’s getting harder to deny that I am finally, in spite of all my efforts to avoid it, a rather drab excuse for an adult. Still, if I could hope to be even half as cool as the fantastic Ms. Freed, or write about my own life-experience with the same deep self-awareness, honesty, passion, and grace that she brings to this amazing new memoir, I would consider that something worth celebrating.
‘Perfect Strangers’ proves once again that real life is often farther-out than fiction. Freed’s story has all the elements of a well-crafted erotic page-turner, including the plucky heroine with a problem on her hands, a seemingly endless series of obstacles to negotiate, and conflicts to overcome—her storytelling all the more powerful for being true! As in any good tale, conflict comes right at the beginning, in this case when Freed discovers her husband in bed with her best friend. Lacking the confidence that comes with experience, the young heroine is, at first, very much adrift: married at seventeen and a dutiful housewife for twelve years, her husband is the only lover she has ever known, though he never seems to miss an opportunity to remind her of what he perceives as her sexual inadequacies, particularly her (supposed) inability to achieve vaginal orgasm.
Soon divorced with two young sons to support, Freed made her way to the west coast in the mid-1970s. “If you come to San Francisco,” Scott McKenzie so famously sang, “be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…” Had she known what awaited her there, Freed might well have arrived with bells on. Already the legendary mecca of seekers, and undisputed world capitol of the dawning New Age culture, San Francisco in those years was the very pulsing, exuberant heart of the Sexual Revolution, and Freed found her element—and herself—there, truly at home for the first time in her life.
The city is much more than mere backdrop in this narrative, with its sleazy clubs and peep shows, steaming bathhouses, velvet-upholstered swingers’ retreats, greasy bistros, head shops, and cafes, high-quality psychedelics, and easy sex—what Erica Jong notoriously referred to as the zipless fuck—San Francisco is the magical canvas on which the story of Freed’s quest for liberty and self-knowledge assumes vivid life.
As in any quest-narrative worth the telling, the heroine needs a guide or mentors to help her learn the workings of this strange, new, and sometimes scary world. Enter a series of fascinating acquaintances and “perfect strangers” to help Dorothy navigate the Yellow Brick Road. At one point, Freed informs us, she was simultaneously dating no fewer than seven men, and would ultimately have close to a hundred lovers in the space of four years. She describes a few of these encounters in frank, unblinking detail, the good, the bad, and the bat-shit crazy, along with what lessons were learned along the way. But probably the most influential and constant figure in her life at that time was “Jake,” Freed’s friend-with-benefits galore, who, in his constant challenging of her inhibitions and hang-ups, ever pushing the envelope of convention, was instrumental in helping her realize her true sexual self, the dazzling butterfly at last emerging from its cocoon of uncertainty and self-doubt.
Freed’s musings about the pitfalls of love, the search for deeper connection and meaning in life, are often extraordinary, and beautifully written, rising to the level of the most memorable personal literature. Throughout, her language is direct, frank—but seldom brutally so—and never convoluted or confused. This is by no means a difficult book to read, though it is certainly an easy one to love.
Enthusiastically recommended!
‘Perfect Strangers’ proves once again that real life is often farther-out than fiction. Freed’s story has all the elements of a well-crafted erotic page-turner, including the plucky heroine with a problem on her hands, a seemingly endless series of obstacles to negotiate, and conflicts to overcome—her storytelling all the more powerful for being true! As in any good tale, conflict comes right at the beginning, in this case when Freed discovers her husband in bed with her best friend. Lacking the confidence that comes with experience, the young heroine is, at first, very much adrift: married at seventeen and a dutiful housewife for twelve years, her husband is the only lover she has ever known, though he never seems to miss an opportunity to remind her of what he perceives as her sexual inadequacies, particularly her (supposed) inability to achieve vaginal orgasm.
Soon divorced with two young sons to support, Freed made her way to the west coast in the mid-1970s. “If you come to San Francisco,” Scott McKenzie so famously sang, “be sure to wear some flowers in your hair…” Had she known what awaited her there, Freed might well have arrived with bells on. Already the legendary mecca of seekers, and undisputed world capitol of the dawning New Age culture, San Francisco in those years was the very pulsing, exuberant heart of the Sexual Revolution, and Freed found her element—and herself—there, truly at home for the first time in her life.
The city is much more than mere backdrop in this narrative, with its sleazy clubs and peep shows, steaming bathhouses, velvet-upholstered swingers’ retreats, greasy bistros, head shops, and cafes, high-quality psychedelics, and easy sex—what Erica Jong notoriously referred to as the zipless fuck—San Francisco is the magical canvas on which the story of Freed’s quest for liberty and self-knowledge assumes vivid life.
As in any quest-narrative worth the telling, the heroine needs a guide or mentors to help her learn the workings of this strange, new, and sometimes scary world. Enter a series of fascinating acquaintances and “perfect strangers” to help Dorothy navigate the Yellow Brick Road. At one point, Freed informs us, she was simultaneously dating no fewer than seven men, and would ultimately have close to a hundred lovers in the space of four years. She describes a few of these encounters in frank, unblinking detail, the good, the bad, and the bat-shit crazy, along with what lessons were learned along the way. But probably the most influential and constant figure in her life at that time was “Jake,” Freed’s friend-with-benefits galore, who, in his constant challenging of her inhibitions and hang-ups, ever pushing the envelope of convention, was instrumental in helping her realize her true sexual self, the dazzling butterfly at last emerging from its cocoon of uncertainty and self-doubt.
Freed’s musings about the pitfalls of love, the search for deeper connection and meaning in life, are often extraordinary, and beautifully written, rising to the level of the most memorable personal literature. Throughout, her language is direct, frank—but seldom brutally so—and never convoluted or confused. This is by no means a difficult book to read, though it is certainly an easy one to love.
Enthusiastically recommended!
September 21, 2020
Dorothy reaches back and tells the tale of her sexual awakening in San Francisco during the days of hippies and free love. A child of the 1950s, Dorothy internalized all the expectations of the era of saddle shoes and happy homemakers.
Those illusions came crashing down when Dorothy caught her husband in bed with her best friend. She packed up her sons and drove from upstate New York to California, where she made a new home and never looked back. Like several others protagonists in my favorite novels and memoirs, this narrator balances a vivid, developing sexual life with family responsibilities (in this case, raising her two sons as a single mother). And for all her many sexual partners, the city of San Francisco is her one true love.
Those illusions came crashing down when Dorothy caught her husband in bed with her best friend. She packed up her sons and drove from upstate New York to California, where she made a new home and never looked back. Like several others protagonists in my favorite novels and memoirs, this narrator balances a vivid, developing sexual life with family responsibilities (in this case, raising her two sons as a single mother). And for all her many sexual partners, the city of San Francisco is her one true love.
May 7, 2018
San Francisco Times, Be There or Be Square.
I enjoyed this book a bunch. The story, writing, and structure are spot on and flow effortlessly, which means the author and editors killed themselves to make it so! Memoirs can be dreary, plodding things rushing to confess and titillate, but when they nail it, like Mary Karr does, and Dorothy Freed does, they resonate.
This is a book about the sexual 70s in San Francisco before everything that is now. If you read the book for the erotic bits you will find them well done and immersive, but may miss the point. If you like me knew the Bay Area back then, in that Jurassic time with free love, oppressive inequality, Viet Nam, Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Women’s Rights, swinging suburbs, hot tubs, and “tune in, turn on, drop out” morphing into cocaine, money, Reagan, and AIDS you will find much more in the tale than hooking up before Tinder.
This is a coming of life book and translates well to anyone who did that circa 20th Century America, and for that matter, anyone who comes at life aware and not embarrassed by who they are and how they lived the times they found themselves in. Take a trip back to those lost days and see where the streetcar takes you, it won’t be a bummer and you have your own souvenirs.
I enjoyed this book a bunch. The story, writing, and structure are spot on and flow effortlessly, which means the author and editors killed themselves to make it so! Memoirs can be dreary, plodding things rushing to confess and titillate, but when they nail it, like Mary Karr does, and Dorothy Freed does, they resonate.
This is a book about the sexual 70s in San Francisco before everything that is now. If you read the book for the erotic bits you will find them well done and immersive, but may miss the point. If you like me knew the Bay Area back then, in that Jurassic time with free love, oppressive inequality, Viet Nam, Civil Rights, Gay Rights, Women’s Rights, swinging suburbs, hot tubs, and “tune in, turn on, drop out” morphing into cocaine, money, Reagan, and AIDS you will find much more in the tale than hooking up before Tinder.
This is a coming of life book and translates well to anyone who did that circa 20th Century America, and for that matter, anyone who comes at life aware and not embarrassed by who they are and how they lived the times they found themselves in. Take a trip back to those lost days and see where the streetcar takes you, it won’t be a bummer and you have your own souvenirs.
May 10, 2018
We have here a sexy but unusual book: an erotic memoir, by an author best known for her heavily BDSM-oriented short stories based on her own experiences, which contains no more “kink proper” than one vague mention of the relative merits of scarfs versus police handcuffs, tools of the inexperienced. (Which, at the time, she was.) While this was surprising, it is not a complaint. Dorothy Freed’s life story is a fascinating one, and in the five-year chapter of it covered in Perfect Strangers, she might not have yet discovered the joys of BDSM, but she certainly had a lot of fun.
More than anything, Freed tells a good story, in this, her first full-length book. One of the most basic requirements in good storytelling, fictional or not, is whether the character we are following changes, and how their experiences alter them. And Ms. Freed, it can safely be said, goes through some changes.
Beginning her story in 1974, the author states the crisis immediately: “When I discovered my husband, Paul, naked and on top of my best friend, Cassandra, it wasn’t the infidelity that hurt me the most—it was the sizzling sex they were engaged in that cut to my core and changed my life forever.”
Until that moment, she had not necessarily thought that her marriage was happy, but had believed that the unhappy sacrifices and compromises she’d made had been worth it: stability, two great kids, something resembling caring.
Dorothy is shattered, as anyone would be. She kicks him out. She is distraught, and depends on her neighbor Carla for emotional support. But she also realizes she has been unhappy in this marriage for a very long time, that only her conventional upbringing had kept her doggedly pursuing her defined role of devoted wife. She had given up her own power of agency, a passion for art (pottery), all for the hope of the Doris Day ending that never came. (And neither, very often, had Dorothy).
After her supportive neighbor tells her a friend in San Francisco is opening a coffee shop/gallery and is looking for a live-in manager, she packs up the kids into the station wagon, and starts her new adventure. Arriving in a city still undergoing radical expansion in freedoms and experimentation of all kinds, Freed makes a plan: A plan to plow through as many men as possible, sampling every type, experiencing freedom for the first time.
It sounds like fun, and it is. We get many chapters devoted to these interludes, some awesome, some weird, some dangerous, though nothing too terrible happens (which was a bit of a surprise). It all has a wonderfully nostalgic, ‘70’s feel to the encounters; looking back, these singles-bar approaches and open-minded sex parties feel so…optimistic; charming, in their way.
But all things change over time, even perfect plans. I won’t give away the ending. Freed has many relationships going on, to say the least, and resolving them does not necessarily come easy.
This was a fun, well-written novel that tells a vital story—that of a woman raised in a conventional time and environment but finding her faithfulness abused and unrewarded, who takes her shattered life into her own hands and enters a radical quest for sexual and personal fulfillment. She comes out of the experience transformed, in so many ways, and for the better. The book captures a specific time and place, a unique one, and portrays the frustrations of an entire generation of women, while depicting a course chosen by few. That alone makes the book important, and well worth reading. (As do the many great sex scenes—this *is* an erotic memoir.)
More than anything, Freed tells a good story, in this, her first full-length book. One of the most basic requirements in good storytelling, fictional or not, is whether the character we are following changes, and how their experiences alter them. And Ms. Freed, it can safely be said, goes through some changes.
Beginning her story in 1974, the author states the crisis immediately: “When I discovered my husband, Paul, naked and on top of my best friend, Cassandra, it wasn’t the infidelity that hurt me the most—it was the sizzling sex they were engaged in that cut to my core and changed my life forever.”
Until that moment, she had not necessarily thought that her marriage was happy, but had believed that the unhappy sacrifices and compromises she’d made had been worth it: stability, two great kids, something resembling caring.
Dorothy is shattered, as anyone would be. She kicks him out. She is distraught, and depends on her neighbor Carla for emotional support. But she also realizes she has been unhappy in this marriage for a very long time, that only her conventional upbringing had kept her doggedly pursuing her defined role of devoted wife. She had given up her own power of agency, a passion for art (pottery), all for the hope of the Doris Day ending that never came. (And neither, very often, had Dorothy).
After her supportive neighbor tells her a friend in San Francisco is opening a coffee shop/gallery and is looking for a live-in manager, she packs up the kids into the station wagon, and starts her new adventure. Arriving in a city still undergoing radical expansion in freedoms and experimentation of all kinds, Freed makes a plan: A plan to plow through as many men as possible, sampling every type, experiencing freedom for the first time.
It sounds like fun, and it is. We get many chapters devoted to these interludes, some awesome, some weird, some dangerous, though nothing too terrible happens (which was a bit of a surprise). It all has a wonderfully nostalgic, ‘70’s feel to the encounters; looking back, these singles-bar approaches and open-minded sex parties feel so…optimistic; charming, in their way.
But all things change over time, even perfect plans. I won’t give away the ending. Freed has many relationships going on, to say the least, and resolving them does not necessarily come easy.
This was a fun, well-written novel that tells a vital story—that of a woman raised in a conventional time and environment but finding her faithfulness abused and unrewarded, who takes her shattered life into her own hands and enters a radical quest for sexual and personal fulfillment. She comes out of the experience transformed, in so many ways, and for the better. The book captures a specific time and place, a unique one, and portrays the frustrations of an entire generation of women, while depicting a course chosen by few. That alone makes the book important, and well worth reading. (As do the many great sex scenes—this *is* an erotic memoir.)
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews