Sex and the City

by Candace Bushnell

  Newbert pulls out a small camera and starts taking pictures of the clients. “Everyone say robster,” he says.

  CANNIBALS AT LE ZOO

  Carrie is at this new restaurant, Le Zoo, having dinner with a bunch of people she doesn’t really know, including the new “It” boy, Ra. The restaurant has about three tables, and it’s overbooked, so everyone stands on the sidewalk. Someone keeps bringing bottles of white wine outside. Pretty soon there’s a party on the street. It’s the beginning of the heat wave, and people are nice: “Oh, I’ve been dying to meet you.” “We have to work together.” “We have to see each other more.” Carrie is talking to everyone and not hating anyone. Not feeling like everyone hates her for a change.

  Inside the restaurant, Carrie sits between Ra and his female manager. Someone from the New York Times keeps taking everyone’s picture. Ra doesn’t talk much. He stares a lot and touches his goatee and nods his head. After dinner, Carrie goes back to Ra’s manager’s house with the manager and Ra to smoke. It seems to be the right thing to do at the time, in the summer, in the heat. The smoke is strong. It’s late. They walk her to a cab.

  “We call this place the zone,” the manager says. She’s staring at Carrie.

  Carrie thinks she actually knows what she’s talking about, what this “zone” is, and why they’re suddenly all in it together.

  “Why don’t you come and live with us in the zone?” Ra asks.

  “I’d like to,” Carrie says, meaning it but also thinking, I’ve got to get home.

  She rides uptown, but before she gets home she says, “Stop the cab.” She actually gets out and walks. She’s still thinking, I’ve got to get home. The city is hot. She feels powerful. Like a predator. A woman is walking down the sidewalk a few feet in front of her. She’s wearing a loose white shirt, it’s like a white flag and it’s driving Carrie crazy. Suddenly Carrie feels like a shark smelling blood. She fantasizes about killing the woman and eating her. It’s terrifying how much she’s enjoying the fantasy.

  The woman has no idea she’s being stalked. She’s oblivious, jiggling along the sidewalk. Carrie envisions tearing into the woman’s soft, white flesh with her teeth. It’s the woman’s own fault, she should lose weight or something. Carrie stops and turns into her building.

  “Good evening, Miss Carrie,” says the doorman.

  “Good evening, Carlos,” Carrie says.

  “Everything okay?”

  “Oh yes, everything’s fine.”

  “Good night now,” Carlos says, sticking his head around the open door of the elevator. He smiles.

  “Good night, Carlos.” She smiles back, showing all of her teeth.

  THE BLUE ANGEL

  In the heat, going outside is bad. But staying inside, alone, is worse.

  Kitty is knocking around in the big Fifth Avenue apartment she lives in with Hubert, her fifty-five-year-old actor boyfriend. Hubert is making a comeback. He’s shooting a film in Italy with a hot young American director, and then he’s going to L.A. to shoot the pilot for a TV series. Kitty will join him in Italy in a couple of days and then go to L.A. with him. She thinks: I’m only twenty-five. I’m too young for this.

  At five o’clock, the phone finally rings.

  “Hello, Kitty?” It’s a man.

  “Yeeeees?”

  “Is Hubert there?”

  “Noooooo.”

  “Oh, this is Dash.”

  “Dash,” Kitty says, somewhat confused. Dash is Hubert’s agent. “Hubert’s in Italy,” Kitty says.

  “I know,” Dash says. “He told me to call you and take you out if I was in town. He thought you might be lonely.”

  “I see,” Kitty says. She realizes he’s probably lying, and she’s thrilled.

  They meet at the Bowery Bar at ten. Stanford Blatch eventually shows up. He’s a friend of Dash’s, but then again, Stanford is a friend of everyone’s.

  “Stanford,” Dash says. He leans back against the banquette. “Where’s the new place to go? I want to make sure my ward here has a good time this evening. I think she’s bored.”

  The two men exchange glances. “I like the Blue Angel,” Stanford says. “But then again, I have particular tastes.”

  “The Blue Angel it is,” Dash says.

  The place is in SoHo somewhere. They walk in, and it’s a seedy joint with plywood platforms for dancing girls. “Slumming is very big this summer,” Stanford says.

  “Oh please. I’ve been slumming for years,” says Dash.

  “I know. You’re the type of person who will be talking on his car phone and say, ‘Could you hold on please? I’m in the middle of getting a blow job on the Palisades Parkway and I’m just about to come,’” Stanford says.

  “Sunset Boulevard only,” Dash says.

  They sit down right in front of one of the platforms. In a little bit, a woman comes out. She’s carrying a bouquet of daisies that looks like she plucked them out of a crack in the sidewalk. She’s totally nude. She’s also skinny with cellulite. “You know something’s really wrong when you see a skinny girl with cellulite,” Kitty says, whispering in Dash’s ear.

  Dash looks at her and smiles indulgently. Okay, I can handle this, Kitty thinks.

  The woman grabs a feather boa and begins dancing. She plucks out the flower petals. She’s totally sweaty. She lies down and rolls on the dirty platform, and when she gets up, she has bits of chicken feathers and ragged petals and dirt stuck all over her body. Then she opens her legs and thrusts herself toward Kitty’s face. Kitty is certain she can smell the woman. But she thinks, Okay, I’ve survived this.

  Then a dyke couple comes out. They perform. The little woman moans. Then the bigger woman starts choking her. Kitty can see the veins sticking out on the little woman’s neck. She’s really being strangled. I’m in a snuff club! Kitty thinks. Stanford orders another glass of white wine.

  The big woman grabs the little woman’s hair and pulls. Kitty wonders if she should try to do something. The woman’s hair comes off, and it’s a wig and underneath she has a fuchsia crewcut.

  “Show’s over,” Dash says. “Let’s go home.”

  Outside, it’s still hot. “What the hell was that about?” Kitty asks.

  “What else did you expect?” Dash says.

  “Goodbye, Kitty,” Stanford says smugly.

  THE CRACKUP

  By the tenth day of the heat wave, Carrie was too attached to Mr. Big. Way too attached. That was the night that she had her breakdown. It started fine: Mr. Big went out alone to a business dinner. No problem at first. She went to her girlfriend Miranda’s. They were going to sit in the air conditioning and watch taped segments of Ab Fab. But then they started drinking. Then Miranda called her drug delivery guy. It continued from there. Carrie hadn’t seen Miranda for a while because she’d been busy with Mr. Big, so Miranda started in on her.

  “I’d like to meet him, you know. Why haven’t I met him? Why haven’t I seen you?” Then she dropped the bomb. Miranda said she knows some girl who was dating Mr. Big during the first month he was dating Carrie.

  “I thought he only saw her once,” Carrie said.

  “Oh, no. They saw each other several times. Se-ver-al. That’s why I didn’t call you for a whole month. I didn’t know whether to tell you or not.”

  “I think this is bad stuff,” Carrie said.

  The next morning, after the freakout, when Carrie was lying in Mr. Big’s bed, she tried to think about what she really wanted. Life felt like it had changed, but had it really? She thinks: I’m still not married. I still don’t have kids. Will it ever happen?

  When?

  It’s the zone or Mr. Big, she thinks. The zone or Mr. Big.

  That afternoon, Mr. Big sends her flowers. The card reads: “Everything will be okay. Love, Mr. Big.”

  “Why did you send me flowers?” Carrie asks him later. “That was so sweet.”

  “I wanted you to know that somebody loved you,” Mr. Big says.

  A couple of days
later, on the weekend, Carrie and Mr. Big go to his house in Westchester, so Mr. Big can play golf. He leaves in the morning, early. Carrie gets up late, makes coffee. She goes outside and walks around the yard. She walks to the end of the street. Walks back. Goes back inside the house and sits down.

  “Now what am I going to do?” she thinks, and tries to imagine Mr. Big on the golf course, swatting golf balls impossible distances.

  18

  How to Marry a Man in Manhattan—My Way

  A couple of months ago, an announcement appeared in the New York Times that “Cindy Ryan” (not her real name) had gotten married. There was nothing particularly interesting or unusual about it, except to people who had known Cindy and lost contact with her, like me, to whom the news was astounding. Cindy had gotten married! At forty! It was nothing short of inspirational.

  You see, Cindy was one of those New York women who had been trying to get married for years. We all know them. They’re the women we’ve been reading about for the past ten years, who are attractive (not necessarily beautiful) and seem to be able to get everything—except married. Cindy sold advertising for a car magazine. She knew stereo equipment. She was as big as a man. She shot guns and traveled (once, on her way to the airport, she had to punch out a drunk cab driver, throw him in the back seat, and drive herself to the airport). She wasn’t exactly the most feminine woman, but she always had men.

  But every year, she got older, and when I would run into her at an old friend’s cocktail party, she’d regale me and everyone else with stories of the big one who got away. The guy with the yacht. The famous artist who couldn’t get a hard-on without having a paintbrush pushed up his bum. The CEO who came to bed in mouse slippers.

  And, you couldn’t help it. You’d look at her and feel a mixture of admiration and revulsion. You’d walk away thinking, She’ll never get married. If she does marry, it’s going to have to be some boring bank manager who lives in New Jersey. And besides, she’s too old.

  Then you’d go home and lie in bed, and the whole thing would come back to haunt you, until you had to call up your friends and be a nasty little cat and say, “Sweetie, if I ever end up like her, be sure to shoot me, huh?”

  Well, guess what. You were wrong. Cindy got married. He’s not the kind of guy she ever thought she’d end up with, but she’s happier than she’s ever been in her life.

  It is time. Time to stop complaining about no good men. Time to stop calling your machine every half hour to see if a man has called. Time to stop identifying with Martha Stewart’s lousy love life even if she is on the cover of People magazine.

  Yes, it is finally time to marry a man in Manhattan, and best of all, it can be done. So relax. You have plenty of time. Martha, pay attention.

  THREE CASHMERE SWEATERS

  It’s a fall weekend and it’s raining. Carrie and Mr. Big are at the restaurant they go to in Bridgehampton. It’s crowded, which is annoying, and the maître d’ who always gives them a table isn’t there. So she and Mr. Big are eating at the bar with their heads together. First, they were going to try this new thing that they’d tried on Mr. Big’s birthday—ordering four entrees, like having Chinese food.

  But Mr. Big wants to eat exactly the same thing Carrie is eating so they just end up having twin dinners.

  “Do you mind?” Mr. Big says.

  “No, I don’t mind,” Carrie says in the ridiculous baby voice they seem to use with each other practically all the time now. “Me too tired to care.”

  “Me too tired too,” Mr. Big says, in the baby voice. His elbow brushes against her. Then he jabs her with it. “Beep beep,” he says.

  “Hey,” she says. “Here’s the line. Don’t cross it.”

  “Sudden death,” Mr. Big growls, leaning over and spearing her pasta with his fork.

  “I’ll give you sudden death,” Carrie says.

  “C’mon, hit me,” he says, and she punches him in the arm and he laughs.

  “Here you two are.” They turn around and Samantha Jones is standing there with like three cashmere sweaters wrapped around her neck. “I thought you guys might be here,” she says. Mr. Big says, “Uh huh.” Sam and Mr. Big don’t really get along. Once, when Sam asked why, Carrie explained it was because Sam always said mean things to her and Big didn’t like it. Sam snorted and said, “I think you can take care of yourself.”

  Sam starts talking about movies, and Carrie has no choice—she has to start talking about movies, too. Mr. Big doesn’t like to talk about movies. Carrie starts wishing Sam would go away so she could just talk to Mr. Big about their favorite new subject—moving to Colorado someday. She doesn’t like herself for wishing Sam would leave, but sometimes when you’re with a man that’s the way it is, you can’t help it.

  DWEEBS, NERDS, AND LOSERS

  “It was David P. that did it,” Trudie said. Trudie is the editor in chief of a magazine for teenage girls. She is forty-one, but at times she looks like a lovely sixteen year old, with huge blue eyes and black hair.

  She leaned back in her chair, pointed to a bookshelf crammed with photos. “I call that, ‘Trudie and . . .’” she said.

  “It’s photos of me and all the losers I went out with. I like to catalogue things.

  “I used to specialize in the two-year relationship. I did everything to make them work. Couples therapy. Talked for hours about commitment problems. Fought. And then I realized, you know what? I’m not going to change a forty-year-old guy who hates women. It’s—not—my—problem.

  “I set a deadline for myself. I said, I have to be married by the time I’m forty. I was dating David P. He was fifty and dishonest. I told him I wanted to be married. He kept making excuses. Sucking me back in. ‘Let’s just go on this one trip to China, and when we come back, we’ll figure it out,’ he’d say. And then we were in Venice, at the Gritti Palace, one of those rooms with the wooden shutters that open onto the Grand Canal. ‘Let’s face it,’ he said. ‘You’re never going to find anyone in Manhattan who’s going to want to get married. So why don’t we just stay like this forever.’ And that’s when I left for good.”

  When Trudie got back to Manhattan, she dug out all her old Filofaxes and called every man she’d ever met in Manhattan. “Yes, every one of them: all the guys I’d passed over, who I’d thought were dweebs, nerds, losers, didn’t have enough hair.”

  “My husband’s name was on the list—he was the last one,” Trudie said. “I remember thinking, If he doesn’t work out, I don’t know what I’m going to do.” (This, of course, was typical New York–woman modesty, because New York women always know what they’re going to do.) The truth is, Trudie had three dinners with her future husband (she didn’t know he was going to be her husband then), and he went off to Russia for two months. It was the beginning of summer, and Trudie went to the Hamptons and completely forgot about him. In fact, she began dating two other guys.

  Trudie smiled and examined her nails. “Okay, he called at the end of the summer, and we began seeing each other again. But the point is you have to be willing to walk at any time. You have to put your foot down. They can’t think you’re this poor, suffering little woman who can’t live without them. Because it’s not true. You can.”

  When it comes to marrying a man in Manhattan, two rules apply. “You have to be sweet,” said Lisa, thirty-eight, a correspondent for a network news show. But at the same time, said Britta, a photo rep, “you can’t let them get away with anything.”

  For these women, age is an advantage. If a woman has survived single in New York until her mid- to late thirties, chances are she knows a thing or two about how to get what she wants. So, when one of these New York women targets a man as a potential husband, there is usually very little he can do to get away.

  “You have to start the training from day one,” said Britta. “I didn’t know that I wanted to marry my husband at the beginning. I only knew that I wanted him, and I would do whatever it took to get him. And I knew I would.

  “You can
’t be like these stupid girls who only want to marry rich guys,” she continued. “You have to be a bit calculating. You always have to expect more than you have. Take Barry [her husband]. As much as he hated it, he didn’t want a typical girl who would let him do whatever he wanted. If someone got him now, they’d be so lucky. He’s smart, sweet, he cooks and cleans. And you know what? He hated it every step of the way.”

  Before Barry, Britta was the kind of woman who once made her date go to the coat check to get her a pack of cigarettes and ran out the back door with someone else while he wasn’t looking. “I once called Barry from the top of a mountain in Aspen and cussed him out for ten minutes because he had another date for New Year’s Eve. Of course, it was only a month after we’d met, but still.”

  After that, Barry pretty much came around, except for two slightly sticky problems. He liked to look at other women, and he sometimes complained about not having his space, especially after she moved in with him. “Well, first of all, I always made sure we had lots of fun,” says Britta. “I cooked. We both gained thirty pounds. We got drunk together. We watched each other get drunk. We took care of each other when we puked.

  “You have to do unexpected things. Like one time he came home and there were candles all over the place and I served him up a TV dinner. Then I used to make him put on some of my clothes. But you’ve got to watch these men all the time. I’m sorry, but they spend 80 percent of their time away from you. When they’re with you, they can pay attention. Why should they be checking out some other chick when they’re eating with you? One time, when Barry’s eyes were wandering, I hit him over the head so hard he nearly fell off his chair. I told him, ‘Put your tongue back in your mouth and your tail between your legs and finish your dinner.’”

  Keeping him, however, is another story. “Women in this town don’t care if a guy is married or engaged,” Britta said. “They’ll still go after him. You have to be on top of it all the time.”