Sex/Life is a Netflix original series that came out in 2021. During the first season of this series, the main character, Billie, and David, the main character from James Baldwin's novel published in 1956, Giovanni's Room, share similar experiences with how they handle and navigate their love lives. The series follows a woman, Billie, and her inner struggle with her sex life as a wife and mother of two. After the birth of her second child, Billie begins fantasizing about sexual experiences from when she was much younger and wilder. The man in these experiences is not her husband, Cooper, but her ex, Brad. Ashamed of her wild sexual experiences with her ex, Billie writes down her fantasies in a digital diary to try and control them. As she gets increasingly lost in her fantasies, she begins to feel so guilty she thinks something is wrong with her. Billie does not understand how she could fantasize about another man besides her husband.
It is apparent her sex life with Cooper is very different from her sex life with Brad, and something must be missing from Billie and Cooper's relationship. Billie does everything she can to convince herself there is nothing wrong with her sex life and relationship with Cooper. She hides behind her computer in denial, neglecting her true desires. Billie's problems get bigger when Cooper finds Billie's diary and Brad reappears in Billie's life. Now that Billie's very detailed sexual experiences are out in the open, Cooper does everything he can to meet Billie's sexual needs and spice up their sex life. But Billie still struggles to keep her history with Brad in the past and eventually realizes it is not just the sex she is fantasizing about. Brad and Copper fight over Billie until the last episode of the first season, which begins with Billie's choice to work things out with Cooper, yet ends with her at Brad's doorstep asking him to have sex with her. We later find out early on in the next season she lost both these men to other women.
The Netflix series, Sex/Life and the novel Giovanni's Room have first-person narration. Giovanni's Room is in first-person, so the audience always reads David's thoughts. In Sex/Life, first-person narration is not as consistent but frequently occurs within an episode. When we hear Billie's thoughts, she is usually speaking about a sexual fantasy, or she is trying to convince herself she does not need her past life anymore. She tells herself something is wrong with her because she should be happy with her "normal suburban mom life." She is happily married and has two beautiful kids. Billie finds herself latched on to this social norm. She doesn't want to speak up and tell her husband what is happening. Instead, she does her best to do what is socially acceptable by staying with her husband. Similarly, David holds on to his heterosexuality when homosexuality or bisexuality is not the social norm. David separates himself from that side of his sexuality because it was not socially accepted at the time.
Along with making connections between the two stories through narration, other supporting characters also have similarities. David's fiance, Hella, is similar to Cooper in that they both represent the "normal" lives David and Billie were trying to live. Hella was David's heterosexual relationship, and for Billie, Cooper was the "perfect" father and husband. David's affair with Giovanni and Billie's sexual fantasies are more representative of who they are and what they desire, yet both these things are secrets. Billie and David are unwilling to come to accept their sexuality. Billie in terms of her eroticism and sexual deviancy, and David in terms of his bisexual experience. Both these characters find themselves trying to ignore their true sexual behaviors, identities, and their true selves. With over sixty years between Giovanni's Room and Sex/Life, it is interesting to see how David and Billie's relationship with love is so similar in times that are so dissimilar.
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