I was a Character in a Best Selling Book (Well, sort of!)

Those of you with children or grandchildren may know of Judy Blume, the best-selling children’s author who started to write adult books in the late 70’s.    

Her life is now the subject of a new documentary, Judy Blume Forever, which made its premier at the 2023 Sundance Film Festival. It reminded me of the pivotal role I played in her first adult book. 

Wifey came out in 1978, almost a decade after her first book was published.  Though it takes place in 1970, Wifey feels almost like a novelized version of The Feminine Mystique: Its main character, Sandy Pressman, is bored and unhappy in her marriage and doesn’t know why.  A woman who even describes herself as juvenile, Sandy’s children are away at camp for the summer, and the extra time to herself has given her too much space to think about all the things going wrong in her life, mainly, her (mostly sexual) dissatisfaction with her "wet rag” of a husband, Norman.

 Rules and regulations for a Norman Pressman fuck:

The room must be dark so they do not have to look at each other.  There will be one kiss, with tongue, to get things going.  His fingers will pass lightly over her breasts, travel down her belly to her cunt, and stop.  He will attempt to find her clitoris.  If he succeeds, he will take it in between his thumb and forefinger and rub.  Too hard.  He will roll over on top of her.  He will raise himself on his elbows, and then….   

When someone sent me a copy of the book, I wrote Ms. Blume’s publisher and offered to show her version 2.0 (sort of because there weren’t versions like we know them now).  Surprisingly, she wrote back and offered to meet me at the then grand St. Louis Chase Park Plaza Hotel.  When the book was republished in 2004, she included this report of our meeting: 

A man named Norman Pressman wrote to assure me he was nothing like Sandy's husband.  Since I was traveling to his city on my book tour

we agreed to meet.  It was an awkward meeting in a hotel room with my publicist and a few other people from the publishing company

(everyone wanted to meet the real Norman Pressman).  He seemed sweet and shy, and was married with children.  He had no way of

knowing I was basically a good girl with an active imagination.  I think he was relieved not to be alone with me.  Then again, maybe he

was disappointed.

 I don‘t know which is more insulting - the description of the Norman Pressman fuck or being described as sweet and shy!