Is There Still Sex in the City?

by Candace Bushnell

  Also by Candace Bushnell

  Sex and the City

  Four Blondes

  Trading Up

  Lipstick Jungle

  One Fifth Avenue

  The Carrie Diaries

  Summer and the City

  Killing Monica

  Copyright © 2019 Candace Bushnell

  Published in Canada in 2019 by House of Anansi Press Inc.

  www.houseofanansi.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  All of the events and characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Title: Is there still sex in the city? / Candace Bushnell.

  Names: Bushnell, Candace, author.

  Identifiers: Canadiana (print) 20190068582 | Canadiana (ebook) 20190068604 | ISBN 9781487006938 (softcover) | ISBN 9781487006945 (EPUB) | ISBN 9781487006952 (Kindle)

  Classification: LCC PS3552.U8229 I8 2019 | DDC 813/.54—dc23

  We acknowledge for their financial support of our publishing program the Canada Council for the Arts, the Ontario Arts Council, and the Government of Canada.

  For JHC, the best MNB

  chapter one

  Is There Still Sex in The City?

  One of the great things about middle age is that most people become a tiny bit nicer and more forgiving. That’s because by the time you get to be middle-aged, some real stuff has happened to you. You’ve learned a few things. Like how a life that looks fine on the outside can feel lousy on the inside. And how bad stuff is going to happen to you, no matter how hard you try to be perfect. But mostly how the things you thought were safe and sacred suddenly aren’t.

  Like marriage. And love. And even the city itself.

  My love affair with the city had started to unravel around the time my dog dropped dead outside the mews near Washington Square Park. A cocker spaniel killed him. Not literally—­technically it was an “accident.” But it felt more than coincidental: the afternoon before the sudden death, I’d run into the killer cocker in the bank.

  The dog had planted its feet and was growling. Embarrassed, the dog’s minder—a young man in his early twenties with a face like a soft bun—reached down to pick it up. The dog then promptly bit him on the finger.

  I shook my head. Some people are not suited for dog care and this kid was obviously one of them.

  The next morning, I was up at seven thirty, priding myself on having made an early start to the day. I lived in a doorman building, so I’d often walk my dog without my keys or my cell phone, knowing I’d be back in two minutes.

  That morning, when I turned the corner, I saw a small commotion at the other end of the block. Sure enough, it was the boy and the cocker.

  I crossed to the other side of the street, smugly congratulating myself for having avoided that danger.

  My dog took his time in the mews. In the meantime, the boy and the cocker had walked to the end of the block and crossed. The cocker spaniel was now on the same side of the street and in the next second came barreling toward us.

  I saw it happen in close up: The frayed old black leather collar. The worn metal hasp attaching the leash to the collar. The dusty swirl of stiff leather particles as the hasp broke free and so did the dog.

  The boy’s muscles ignited and he stumbled after the dog, managing to tackle it in his arms just before it reached my dog.

  I thought surely my dog was safe and that this was yet another canine sidewalk skirmish. The city was filled with fear biters; these incidents happened all the time.

  I noticed that the leash in my hand had gone slack. I turned around to look for my dog. It took me a second to realize he was lying on his side on the sidewalk.

  He was shaking. As I bent down, his eyes rolled back and his tongue—his great big dog tongue—slid out of the side of his open mouth.

  Tucco, named after a character in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, my husband’s favorite movie, was dead.

  My first instinct was to become hysterical. But I quickly realized that drawing all the attention to myself wouldn’t be useful. A crowd had gathered and was offering to help, but no one knew what to do.

  The dog, you see, was big. An Ibizan hound, he was twenty-nine inches at the shoulder and seventy-five pounds. About the size and shape of a small deer.

  I wasn’t sure I could lift him. And that wasn’t the only problem. I had absolutely no idea what to do. I didn’t have my wallet or my cell phone and my husband was, once again, out of town.

  But then someone called the nearest vet’s office and even though it wasn’t open, they were sending someone there to meet me. The vet’s office was several blocks away, and somebody hailed a taxi and somebody else picked up my dog and the boy with the killer cocker spaniel said, “I’m sorry. I hope my dog didn’t kill your dog.”

  He dug around in his pocket and extracted a crumpled twenty-dollar bill. It was dirty and worn. “For the taxi,” he said as he pressed it into my hand.

  I got into the taxi and someone placed the still-warm, dead dog on the seat next to me.

  “Hurry, please,” I said to the driver.

  One of the things you learn about middle age is that life is not a movie. In a movie, the driver would have said, “Oh my god, poor you and your poor dog!” and rushed to the animal hospital and somehow the brilliant New York City veterinarians would have revived my dog and he would have lived. But in real life, the cab driver is not having any of it. He is not having your dead dog in the back seat of his taxi.

  “No dogs allowed.”

  “It’s an emergency.”

  “Why? Is the dog sick?”

  “Yes. Yes. He’s dying. Please sir. He may already be dead.”

  This was the wrong thing to say.

  “He’s dead? I can’t have a dead dog in my taxi. For a dead dog you’ve got to call an ambulance.”

  “I don’t have my cell phone,” I screamed.

  The driver tried to get me to get out of the cab, but I wasn’t getting out and he wasn’t going to touch the dog so eventually he gave in. He only had to travel three blocks up Sixth Avenue, but the traffic was bumper-to-bumper. He verbally abused me all the way.

  I tuned him out by reminding myself that no matter how bad my situation, there was another woman somewhere in the world who had it much worse. And besides, my dog dropping dead unexpectedly wasn’t the most terrible thing that had happened to me lately.

  The year before my mother had died. Hers was another unexpected death. When she was in her fifties—my age—she took hormone replacement pills. It was a standard prescription for a woman going through menopause. The problem was, the hormones could cause breast cancer, often deadly. And so, even though there was no history of breast cancer in our family and all the women on both sides of my family had lived well into their nineties, my mother passed away at seventy-two.

  Back then I’d tried to pretend it was fine, even though it wasn’t. My hair fell out and I couldn’t eat.

  It took me a long time to reconcile it. But my friends had been there for me. And so, too, had my husband.

  When I arrived at the animal hospital, they kindly let me use their landline to call anyone I needed. Luckily I had a few numbers memorized. Like my husband’s. I called hi
m three times. No answer. It wasn’t yet 9:00 a.m. He didn’t start work for another thirty minutes. Where was he?

  And my friend Marilyn. She arrived ten minutes later, speed walking from her apartment in Chelsea.

  Marilyn hadn’t had her coffee or a shower and like me, she was dressed in sweats. Our faces unwashed, our teeth unbrushed, and our hair uncombed, we looked at each other.

  What now?

  The dog died from an aneurism. That’s what the vet thought, although she couldn’t say for sure unless they sent the dog away for an autopsy. Did I want that? No, I didn’t my friend Marilyn said.

  My husband had always hated the dog. I wondered if the death of Tucco was a sign.

  It was. I didn’t know it then, but my relationship was like an aneurism—a death waiting to happen.

  * * *

  Three months later, in November, my husband asked for a sectionorce. He did it the day after one of those huge freak snowstorms. We were at my little house in Connecticut and there was no water or power. I couldn’t imagine going back to the city with him, so I stayed in the country, scooping up snow and melting it over a fire to keep the toilet going.

  The sectionorce wrangling began. It had the usual shockingly ugly moments but compared to other people’s sectionorces, it was a relative breeze.

  Except for one wrinkle.

  The mortgage on the apartment. The old one had to be canceled and a new one drawn up in just my name.

  I couldn’t imagine it would be a problem, and neither could my banker. Especially since I had enough in the bank to pay for the mortgage anyway.

  My banker kept reassuring me that it was going to be okay. Right up until the appointed day finally came three months later, when I walked into the bank and sat down.

  I had a bad feeling. “Well?” I said.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s the algorithm.”

  “I’m not going to get the mortgage, am I?”

  “No,” he whispered. And suddenly, I understood. I no longer checked off any of the right boxes.

  I was (a) a woman, (b) single, (c) self-employed, and (d) over fifty.

  And because I had no applicable boxes, I was no longer a demographic. Which meant, in the world of algorithms, I didn’t exist.

  I stood outside the bank in shock.

  All the familiar landmarks were there—the glass-plate windows of the Knickerbocker through which one could see the old men in sweaters nursing their drinks at the bar. The deli where I went every morning next to the liquor store with the wound-up guy who talked nonstop about baseball. Like me, he’d been in the city for over thirty years.

  I crossed the street and stared up at my building. I remembered how many times I’d passed this building when I first came to New York. I was going to NYU and Studio 54. I was nineteen years old and I’d already been published by a few of the underground newspapers that were flourishing in the city at that time.

  I was so broke. But it didn’t matter because everything was happening and it was all new and exciting. I’d pass the building with the white-gloved doormen in their gray uniforms and stop to admire the garden—an actual garden with flowers and tall grasses—and I’d think, Someday, if I make it, I’m going to live here!

  Now I did live there. In a corner apartment on the top floor in the same building where, coincidentally, the actor who played Mr. Big also lived. The apartment had been featured on the cover of Elle Decor, and of all my accomplishments, it was the one my mother, a skilled decorator, had loved most of all.

  And now I felt like the system had defeated me. Not only could I lose my home, but I was also about to become one more of the millions of middle-aged women who would get sectionorced that year. Who would have to get back out there, to once again look for a man who doesn’t exist. And, like me, would likely have to find a new place to live.

  I started to cry a little. But then I stopped because I realized I was too tired to cry.

  I called Marilyn instead.

  “Sweetie,” I said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I just wanted to let you know. I’m done.”

  With that, I left Manhattan.

  * * *

  * * *

  Unlike millions of other women who would get sectionorced that year, I was lucky to have made enough money on my own to save for the proverbial rainy day—of which, in middle age, there will be many. As a sort of fuck you to the bank, I paid off the mortgage, rented my apartment, hung up my high heels, and hightailed it to my teacup house in the hills of Litchfield County. And because there was plenty of room to run, I bought two standard poodles, Pepper and Prancer, and did what I’d always wanted to do ever since I was a little kid: I wrote whatever I wanted and I rode dressage horses.

  Being what my father called a cocky son of a bitch, right away I got bucked off and broke a bone—after which I hobbled around with a walker and felt like an old person. I wasn’t 100 percent sure that I should get back on the horse, but my father encouraged me. He reminded me of how I’d always “gotten back on the horse” as a child. Three months later, I entered a competition and won a couple of ribbons.

  I woke up in the morning and inhaled the sound of silence.

  I was happy.

  I didn’t think about my old life. I didn’t think about New York. And most of all, I didn’t think about men.

  Nevertheless, six months into my retreat, I got a call from Tina Brown. She had a story idea for me. Now that the appropriate time had passed since my sectionorce, she suggested that I throw myself back into the dating world and write about what it was like to be dating over fifty. I could do internet dating. I could hire a matchmaker.

  I cut her off.

  I don’t think so.

  I wasn’t ready to start dating. But most of all, I didn’t want to. I’d been in relationships for nearly thirty-five years. I’d even experienced the full relationship cycle—fall in love, get married, and get sectionorced.

  And now I was supposed to do it all over again? Was engaging in the relationship cycle the only thing I could do with my life? I thought about the time-honored definition of crazy: doing the same thing over and over again and hoping for a different result.

  It was time to put an end to the cycle. And so I decided for the first time in thirty-four years to be man-free.

  This also meant being sex-free. At this point in my life, I’m not a casual sex person.

  I didn’t talk about it, of course. The topic of sex—once the source of so much amusement, embarrassment, fear, and joy—rarely came up. My single friends had been single forever and not dating and therefore not getting any, while my married friends were married and dealing with kids and also—I imagined—not getting any. But every now and then, when I’d explain to some man that I wasn’t interested in going on a date and frankly I might never be interested in going on a date ever again, he would gasp, “But what about sex?” as if I had just killed a kitten.

  “What about it?”

  “What do you do?”

  “I don’t do anything.”

  “But don’t you need sex?”

  “Do you? I’ve found that people who need sex tend to make bad decisions to get it. I’ve seen people blow up an entire world-class career just because they needed to get a little.”

  Besides, I had so much else to do that felt much more interesting. Like cooking elaborate meals. Learning Instagram. Making a pop song on GarageBand. My best friend was a girl called Angie. She lived up the road and she had just survived cancer and worked at a psychiatric institution teaching teenage kids Shakespeare. We would hike up and down the country roads, passing Calder’s sculptures and Frank McCourt’s house. There was no cell service up there, so we talked. About feminism and the meaning of life and the fever dream novels I was writing. We’d often stop by Arthur Miller’s writing studio, the one he made himself with
his own hands and where he wrote The Crucible. It was a small space, maybe eight by ten, with a smoothed piece of long wood attached to the wall as a desk. I’d go to the window and stare at the view of the woods and the dirt road and think: This is the very same view Arthur Miller must have looked at a million times. And how did he feel? Did he, too, despair of ever getting this writing thing right? And then I’d pray: Please, please let some of Arthur Miller’s genius rub off on me.

  Pleeeeasssse.

  Well, it didn’t.

  During the time I spent in Connecticut, I wrote three books—every one of which my publishers hated, so much so that they refused to publish them. When I finally managed to get out a whole manuscript I thought they’d like, they sent it back with a black slash across every page.

  Welcome to middle-age madness, where your career might possibly be over.

  I called Marilyn. Help.

  “Sweetie,” she said. “I think you’re going crazy up there all by yourself. Which is why the stuff you’re writing is crazy, too.”

  And then my accountant called.

  He, at least, had good news. If I sold my apartment, I could take advantage of a tax break. Paying off the mortgage three years earlier had been a smart move—the market had gone up, and with the one-time tax break I was able to make a profit.

  Enough of a profit I realized, that if I was very clever and bought the cheapest real estate I could find, I could just afford a small one-bedroom in the city and a small, run-down house on the edge of a former fishing village in the Hamptons. A place in this hamlet was something I’d been hoping to secure ever since Marilyn moved out there two years ago.

  Like me, she, too, had suddenly and inexplicably soured of the city.

  Actually, that isn’t true. Like me, she’d experienced a series of insults that made her feel like the city was trying to get rid of her as well.

  Literally. The small family-owned building near the High Line where Marilyn rented for twelve years was going to be demolished to make way for an apartment tower.