Barkley takes a sip from his Coke and scratches his stomach. It’s three in the afternoon, and he just woke up an hour ago. “These girls are nomads,” he says. “They have a guy in every city. They call me when they’re in New York, and I always imagine that they call someone else when they’re in Paris or Rome or Milan. We pretend that we’re going out when they’re in town. We hold hands and see each other every day. A lot of girls want that. But then they’re gone.” Barkley yawns. “I don’t know. There are so many beautiful girls around that after a while you start looking for someone who can make you laugh.”
“It’s amazing sometimes what you’ll do to be with these girls,” George says. “I went to church with one girl and her daughter. I’ve started to hang out with older girls almost exclusively. I’ve got to retire soon. They keep me from getting work done. They make me fuck up my life.” George shrugged and glanced out the window of his 34th-floor office at the view of midtown Manhattan. “Look at me,” he says. “I’m an old man at twenty-nine.”
6
New York’s Last Seduction:
Loving Mr. Big
A fortyish movie producer I’ll call Samantha Jones walked into Bowery Bar, and, as usual, we all looked up to see whom she was with. Samantha was always with at least four men, and the game was to pick out which one was her lover. Of course, it wasn’t really much of a game, because the boyfriend was too easy to spot. Invariably, he was the youngest, and good-looking in that B-Hollywood actor kind of way—and he would sit there with a joyously stupid expression on his face (if he had just met Sam) or a bored, stupid look on his face, if he had been out with her a few times. If he had, it would be beginning to dawn on him that no one at the table was going to talk to him. Why should they, when he was going to be history in two weeks?
We all admired Sam. First of all, it’s not that easy to get twenty-five-year-old guys when you’re in your early forties. Second, Sam is a New York inspiration. Because if you’re a successful single woman in this city, you have two choices: You can beat your head against the wall trying to find a relationship, or you can say “screw it” and just go out and have sex like a man. Thus: Sam.
This is a real question for women in New York these days. For the first time in Manhattan history, many women in their thirties to early forties have as much money and power as men—or at least enough to feel like they don’t need a man, except for sex. While this paradox is the topic of many an analytic hour, recently my friend Carrie, a journalist in her mid-thirties, decided, as a group of us were having tea at the Mayfair Hotel, to try it out in the real world. To give up on love, as it were, and throttle up on power, in order to find contentment. And, as we’ll see, it worked. Sort of.
TESTOSTERONE WOMEN, FOOLISH MEN
“I think I’m turning into a man,” said Carrie. She lit up her twentieth cigarette of the day, and when the maître d’hôtel ran over and told her to put it out, she said, “Why, I wouldn’t dream of offending anyone.” Then she put the cigarette out on the carpet.
“You remember when I slept with that guy Drew?” she asked. We all nodded. We were all relieved when she had, because she hadn’t had sex for months before that. “Well, afterwards, I didn’t feel a thing. I was like, Gotta go to work, babe. Keep in touch. I completely forgot about him after that.”
“Well, why the hell should you feel anything?” Magda asked. “Men don’t. I don’t feel anything after I have sex. Oh sure, I’d like to, but what’s the point?”
We all sat back smugly, sipping tea, like we were members of some special club. We were hard and proud of it, and it hadn’t been easy to get to this point—this place of complete independence where we had the luxury of treating men like sex objects. It had taken hard work, loneliness, and the realization that, since there might never be anyone there for you, you had to take care of yourself in every sense of the word.
“Well, I guess it’s a lot of scar tissue,” I said. “All those men who end up disappointing you. After a while, you don’t even want to have feelings anymore. You just want
to get on with your life.”
“I think it’s hormones,” said Carrie. “The other day, I was in the salon getting a deep-conditioning treatment because they’re always telling me my hair is going to break off. And I read in Cosmo about male testosterone in women—this study found that women who have high levels of testosterone are more aggressive, successful, have more sex partners, and are less likely to get married. There was something incredibly comforting about this information—it made you feel like you weren’t a freak.”
“The trick is getting the men to cooperate,” said Charlotte.
“Men in this city fail on both counts,” said Magda. “They don’t want to have a relationship, but as soon as you only want them for sex, they don’t like it. They can’t just perform the way they’re supposed to.”
“Have you ever called a guy at midnight and said, ‘I want to come over,’ and had him say yes?” Carrie asked.
“The problem is that sex doesn’t stay done,” said Charlotte. She had a name for men who were fantastic lovers: Sex Gods. But even she was having trouble. Her most recent conquest was a poet who was terrific in bed, but who, she said, “kept wanting me to go to dinner with him and go through all the chat bit.” He’d recently stopped calling: “He wanted to read me his poetry, and I wouldn’t let him.”
“There’s a thin line between attraction and repulsion,” she continued. “And usually the repulsion starts when they begin wanting you to treat them as people, instead of sex toys.”
I asked if there was realistically any way to pull off this whole “women having sex like men” thing.
“You’ve got to be a real bitch,” said Charlotte. “Either that, or you’ve got to be incredibly sweet and nice. We fall through the cracks. It confuses men.”
“It’s too late for sweet,” Carrie said.
“Then I guess you’re just going to have to become a bitch,” Magda said. “But there’s one thing you forgot.”
“What?”
“Falling in love.”
“I don’t think so,” Carrie said. She leaned back in her chair. She was wearing jeans and an old Yves Saint Laurent jacket. She sat like a man, legs apart. “I’m going to do it—I’m going to become a real bitch.”
We looked at her and laughed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.