RHINEBECK, N.Y. — Alyssa Shelasky, a travel, food, parenting and sex writer, recently experimented with a new medium: composing a “Missed Connection” on Craigslist.
Earlier this year, she bought a weekend home near Rhinebeck, N.Y., with her partner, Sam Russell, and she’s been trying to get settled, maybe even find a friend. “When we first moved here over the winter, I was a bit lost and disoriented,” she said. “I loathe feeling like a tourist.”
So she took her children, Hazel, 6, and River, 2, to the farmers’ market. Her experience was not exactly bucolic. “As I was pulling away in our used Dodge minivan, a woman in a shiny Mercedes was violently beeping at me and giving me the finger because I wasn’t moving fast enough,” she said.
Ms. Shelasky said she has a large community of girlfriends at home in New York City, but not around Rhinebeck. “I think I have a very strong sense of self,” she said. “I’m a mother, then a writer, then a girlfriend.” To be out of the city without anyone to vent about life with, “or talk about sex with, is a little bit strange for me.”
But then she met a British woman who was at a playground with her children. “She was funny, and relaxed, and self-deprecating,” Ms. Shelasky said. “It felt very uplifting.” Ms. Shelasky wanted to exchange numbers but didn’t have the chance before her children ran out of steam. “We awkwardly said goodbye, and I walked away looking longingly at her as she looked back at me.”
So she posted the “Missed Connection.”
She received two responses … from men looking for a different sort of connection. Not that this is outside Ms. Shelasky’s comfort zone: For the last seven years she has been the editor of the Sex Diaries column for New York magazine, and the kind of person who will freely admit, “I breastfed both my kids and have sex with a bra on.”
On a recent balmy Friday evening, days ahead of the publication of her memoir, “This Might Be Too Personal: And Other Intimate Stories,” she had a rare night away from her family in Rhinebeck village.
“I’m always trying to show my kids a good time, and they need a lot of attention and they come first. I never got to sort of be me in my new place,” she said while browsing at the home goods store House SFW, which sells antique French linens with lobsters embroidered on it and $400 sets of cocktail glasses.
“When I marry a rich second husband — even though I’m anti-marriage — I’ll register here,” she said.
“I can’t get a grasp here, if it’s ‘namaste’ and carob chips,” Ms. Shelasky said as she walked across the street to Samuel’s Sweet Shop.
She wanted to buy candy necklaces for her daughter. “Hazel is the leader of a black market candy ring at school,” she said. “I’m like, you’re 6, this is criminal. But I guess I’m an enabler because I keep buying her candy.”
The store is partly owned by the actor Paul Rudd. “I have a framed picture of us in the house,” Ms. Shelasky said. It was taken at a gala where Mr. Rudd was the celebrity host and she was attending about four months after having her daughter as a single mother by choice.
“Everyone said, ‘It’s going to be hard’ or ‘You’ll never have a social life again.’ But there I was, dressed up, poised and had it together,” she said. “The picture is like, I’m here, I’m fine, I’m glowing.”
Ms. Shelasky, who wore a Zadig and Voltaire printed camisole and Mother jeans, walked around the corner to Petit Bistro to sit at the bar for dinner. She ordered a dirty gin martini and said, “The only thing I like more than holding a martini is a grudge.” A passing waiter told her how good she looked. “Sometimes I am so sick of talking about love and sex, and I want to write a style book on knowing what you like.”
She listed what she liked after ordering steak frites, medium. “Freda Salvador shoes, La Colombe coffee. Bravo, not E!. Charlotte Tilbury eyeliner in emerald green. Those Jonathan Adler ceramics that say things like ‘Quaaludes.’ And I hate mayonnaise with a passion.”
In her book she writes candidly about love and parenting, but also about sexual harassment, trying to get a script made in Hollywood and her decision to have a child on her own at age 37 using a sperm donor.
“You have control over your finances, style, dating. …” But conceiving a baby alone? “You can’t do it. You feel so hopeless and so trapped in your own life. All you want is some hope that it’s possible.” Now that she’s done it successfully, she will tell aging single women she just met that she can help them get pregnant on their own.
“I did some online dating while I was pregnant. I would say, ‘By the way, I’m a little bit pregnant,’” she said. “I dated early on in my pregnancy and also while I was showing. I loved having enormous porn star breasts.”
Reactions were mixed. “Some guys were like, ‘I love that, it’s not for me, but you rock.’ A guy was a star on one of my favorite TV shows at the time was like, ‘How dare you,’” she said. “He was not worth another second of my time.”
She stopped dating when she was six or seven months along, “when I became uncomfortable and tired and wanted to order in Thai food and watch ‘Friday Night Lights.’”
When Hazel was a baby, Ms. Shelasky decided to go back to online dating, putting in her profile that she was “a single mom in a very uncomplicated situation.” She met Mr. Russell, who has legally adopted Hazel and is River’s father. “I have negative interest in being married and yet I want to be with him forever,” she said. “I guess I have traditional values I can’t fight.”
She still hasn’t connected with that British woman from the playground. Not that she’s so desperate for company right now. “The friend shop is open, but by appointment only,” she said with a laugh. “I’m a really independent person and need a lot of space, so the rare moments I’m not with my kids, do I want to be with a mom friend or do I want to be alone?” she said. “Alone time is the greatest luxury when you are a parent.”
She called an Uber on her phone. She has a nightly routine of taking a hot bath, taking a sleep gummy and walking naked from the tub straight to bed. But that’s been a bit more difficult in the country. “I know nothing will happen to me, but I am a writer with a vivid imagination.”
