CRYING NONWOLF
On a gray afternoon in late November, a man we’ll call Chollie Wentworth was holding forth on one of his favorite topics—New York society. “These perennial bachelors?” he asked, ticking off the names of some well-known high rollers who have been part of the scene for years. “Frankly, my dear, they’re just a bore.”
Chollie tucked into his second Scotch. “There are a lot of reasons why a man might not get married,” he said. “Some men never grow past sex; and for some people, marriage spoils sex. Then there’s the difficult choice between a woman in her thirties who can bear you children, or a woman like Carol Petrie, who can organize your life.
“Mothers can also be a problem,” Chollie continued. “Such is the case with X,” he said, naming a multimillionaire financier who was now in his late fifties and had still not tied the knot. “He suffers from a permanent case of bimbo-itis. Still, if you’re X, who are you going to bring home? Are you going to challenge your mother with a real standup woman who will disrupt the family?
“Even so,” Chollie said, leaning forward in his chair, “a lot of people are tired of these guys’ commitment problems. If I were a single woman, I’d think, Why bother with these guys, when there are 296 million amusing gay men out there who can fill a chair? I’d find a very amusing gay man who can be entertaining on a hundred topics to take me out. Why waste your time with X? Who wants to sit there and listen to him drone on about his business? To have to fawn all over him? He’s old. He’s too old to change. A man like X is not worth the effort. These men have cried nonwolf too many times.
“After all, it’s women who decide if a man is desirable or undesirable. And if a man is never going to make the effort to get married, if he’s never going to contribute . . . well, I think women are fed up. And for good reason.”
JACK’S THANKSGIVING
“Here’s what happens,” said Norman, a photographer. “Take Jack. You know Jack—everybody knows Jack. I’ve been married for three years. I’ve known Jack for ten. The other day I’m thinking, In all the time I’ve known Jack, he’s never had a girlfriend for more than six weeks. So we all go to a Thanksgiving dinner at some friends’. Everyone at the dinner has known each other for years. Okay, not everyone’s married, but they’re at least in serious relationships. Then Jack shows up, once again, with a bimbo. Twenty-something. Blond. Turns out, sure enough, she’s a waitress he met the week before. So, one, she’s a stranger, doesn’t fit in, and changes the whole tenor of the dinner. And he’s useless, too, because all he’s thinking about is how he’s going to get laid. Any time anyon
e sees Jack, it’s this same scenario. Why spend time with him? After Thanksgiving, the women in our group all decided that Jack was out. He was banned.”
Samantha Jones was having dinner at Kiosk with Magda, the novelist. They were discussing bachelors—Jack and Harry in particular.
“Someone said that Jack is still talking about who he scored with,” said Magda. “It’s the same conversation he was having fifteen years ago. Men think that a bad reputation is something that only women can get. They’re wrong. Don’t these guys understand that when you see who they want to be with—a bimbo—that you don’t want to be with a man who wants to be with that?”
“Take a guy like Harry,” Samantha said. “I can sort of understand Jack—he’s totally into his career and making big money. But Harry doesn’t want that. He says he doesn’t care about power and money. On the other hand, he doesn’t care about love and relationships, either. So exactly what is he about? What is the point of his existence?”
“Besides,” said Magda, “who knows where these guys’ dirty dicks have been.”
“I couldn’t find it less interesting,” said Samantha.
“I ran into Roger the other day, outside Mortimers, of course,” Magda said.
“He must be fifty now,” Samantha said.
“Close to it. You know, I dated him when I was twenty-five. He’d just been named one of New York’s most eligible bachelors by Town & Country. I remember thinking, It’s all such a crock! First of all, he lived with his mother—okay, he did have the top floor of their town house, but still. Then there was the perfect house in Southampton and the perfect house in Palm Beach and the membership at the Bath & Tennis. And you know what? That was it. That was his life. Playing this role of eligible bachelor. And there wasn’t anything below the surface.”
“What’s he doing now?” Samantha asked.
“The usual,” Magda said. “He went through all the girls in New York, and when they finally got his number, he moved to L.A. From there, to London, now Paris. He said he was back in New York for two months, spending time with his mother.”
The two women screamed with laughter.
“Get this,” Magda said. “He tells me a story. ‘I really like French girls,’ he says. He goes to dinner at the home of this big shot Frenchman with three daughters. ‘I’d take any of them,’ he says. He’s at dinner, he thinks he’s doing pretty well, he tells them about his friend, some Arab prince, who has three wives, all of them sisters. The French girls start glaring at him, and the dinner ends almost immediately.”
“Do you think these guys get it? Do you think they realize how pathetic they are?” Samantha asked.
“Nope,” Magda said.
“I SUFFER”
The next day, Simon Piperstock made several calls from the first-class lounge at Kennedy International Airport. One of them was to a young woman he’d dated several years ago.
“I’m on my way to Seattle,” Simon said. “I’m not good.”
“Really.” The woman sounded almost happy about it.
“For some reason, everybody is telling me that my behavior is reprehensible. They say it’s disgusting.”
“Do you think it’s disgusting?”
“A little bit.”