I’ve always imagined the human body as a time capsule of sort. Memories are preserved in the mind, but witnessed by the body. The evocation of your first fall as a child can flicker in the back of your brain, but the cut that it produced on your knee propels the memory to a place of physical embodiment. The wound will fade over time into a scar but even after the skin tissue heals, it leaves a mark that alters the skin— sometimes forever. Sometimes the things that alter us aren’t always as visible as childhood scars; sometimes they take the form of other things that our bodies witness— say, a person from the past. If the tumbles and falls of youth can deal scars, what can our first kisses leave? What can a first love imprint upon us? What does sex stain us with?
The Netflix series Sex/Life roused these thoughts in my head and inspired me to think of the body and its relation to memory. Billie (the frequently bare-breasted lead played by Sarah Shahi) finds herself thinking of an old lover from eight years ago, Brad (Adam Demos)—an Aussie-tongued record producer, with an affinity for fingering women whenever possible. Her wistful journaling of their sexual past together tears at the life she’s made with her husband, Cooper (Mike Vogel)— a strapping banker, who hails from a page in GQ magazine. Brad becomes the void that wedges its way into Billie’s marriage; he was the bad boy— the Logan to her Jean Grey, and there’s just something about him that she cannot shake despite how perfect her life seems. Billie’s body jumps to the forefront of the plot as the vehicle through which the viewer experiences her memories— which become criminal.
What is seemingly lost in the salacious plot is how the body becomes the antagonist; while it seems Billie swore her body to secrecy about her past with Brad, it proves to be anything but tight-lipped (meow), becoming the road down which she travels to fantasizing about her ex-lover. What becomes evident is that the series banks off of the guilt Billie feels for remembering her past with Brad, as if she suddenly can choose to remove herself from a past that she was present in. There’s a shame associated with her inability to forget her old lover and an the assumption that her memories were to expire when she got married to Cooper. The ultimate crime (aside from her interaction with her old beau) becomes that she dared to live a life before she was married at all— especially with a body that remembers almost as vividly as the mind.
The thing about memory is that, from a young age, we are groomed to discern which memories we hold onto and which ones we are to release. There are things we wish to remember forever and things we’d rather forget. Sometimes the attempt is easy to achieve and other times, the mind is conquered by the body in the tango of what we can’t— or won’t— let go of. While Sex/Life seems to stick a tongue out at monogamy in Billie’s insatiable sexual appetite, it also reveals an underestimation of how powerful the body is in the role of forming memories. She can remember every touch, kiss and sexual encounter with Brad eight years later. The body withholds that interaction; so much so that even nursing her newborn conjures up memories that are related to him. If we swapped our bodies out after each sexual interaction, then the fizzling of our previous escapades would seem feasible. But the body is the witness and the site of our experiences; what isn’t happening to us anymore has still, in fact, happened even after the memory fades. Billie’s dilemma is that she is unable to cope with the monogamous state of her body that—like many others before settling down— once behaved far from it.
Sex in monogamous relationships is often said to be in need of “spice” after some time. It becomes an endless attempt to somehow regain a “spark” that once flickered in the beginning of the relationship. But could it be that the spark people seek has more to do with who you were before your relationship than who you’ve become in it? Our bodies have had experiences with other bodies and all of that history is present when we first begin a sexual relationship with someone new. The sex we have with our current partners will always be connected to the sex with our previous ones— after all, we are the common participant. Billie’s mistake was that she thought she could deny what she— and her body— naturally witnessed. Brad was always there with Billie from the beginning of her relationship with Cooper. Even if he was no longer happening to her, he happened. The people you’ve loved/had sex with don’t always disappear when the dawn of your new life breaks. It’s not that simple.
Am I giving Billie break? Yes and no. Her feelings for her ex aren’t criminal— they’re natural; but she lets them get to a place where they become problematic (depending on whether you ship her and Brad). While humans are fallible Billie’s mistakes are undoubtedly preventable; her body’s memory places Brad on a pedestal that is merely just sexual, considering how much of an emotional rollercoaster he put her on in the past. Billie struggles to accept the fact that her feelings can be entirely just that: feelings. They can be as telling as they can be unreliable. My advice to her is that if they’re important enough to act upon, let GQ Coop go and go back to Brad (and his fingers). But while you’re at it:
Get a password for your laptop.
Burn your article in support of monogamy.
Make sure you pump your breastmilk before you have sex.