Is There Still Sex in the City?

by Candace Bushnell

  “Sam,” I said. “Jude the Tinder date told me all this really terrible stuff about men.” I gave him a quick recap. “You’ve been on Tinder,” I added somewhat accusingly. “Is all of this true?”

  “Ugh. Do you really want to go there?”

  Thirty minutes later, Sam was pacing my apartment, clutching his man bun. “If there’s one thing other men know, it’s this: Men are stupid. They’re run by their little heads. And there’s a reason men call it their little head. Men consciously know that their penises should not be in charge. But they are.”

  “But why?”

  “Because that’s how it is when you’re a guy today. You don’t have a choice. You have hard-core pornography shoved under your face by the time you’re twelve whether you want to see it or not. Same with Tinder. Even if you don’t want to, you become addicted. If you’re a guy like me, Tinder is designed to feed into the worst part of your psyche. The part that secretly wants to judge a beauty pageant.”

  “Really?”

  “And that’s why these guys can’t stop swiping,” he continued. “It’s all about the numbers. Guys swipe left on every photo just to see what they can get. Plus, it’s largely anonymous until you give your pictures life by saying something. And if the girl says something back, it’s like she’s already agreed to have sex with you. And so you just keep swiping. It turns you into a dog. A dog!” Sam gnashed his teeth. “When I think of my sisters . . .”

  I thought back to what Marion had said about just wanting a guy to be “a basic human being.”

  “So you’re saying all men on Tinder are assholes?”

  “Not all men,” Sam said. “Not me. But most men.”

  “What percentage?”

  Sam shrugged guiltily. “Ninety percent?”

  Was Tinder an app for people who hated themselves, I wondered? Was that why the men were so negative about each other? Tinder made them hate themselves and that made them automatically hate other men as well?

  I’m Invisible

  That evening, Sassy came into the city from the Village to meet up at what was supposedly a popular singles bar located in a hotel on Park Avenue. As I entered, I was taken aback. The bar was filled with attractive, age-appropriate men.

  I joined Sassy at the bar. One guy in particular caught our eye: a handsome man with salt-and-pepper hair. Sassy and I decided to try to get the guy’s attention the old-fashioned way: by catching his eye.

  Fuck. We couldn’t even catch the eye of the female bartender.

  “Either we are old, or we’ve become invisible,” I said, longing for a glass of white wine. “I know we’re old,” I groaned. “But we used to have some pull irl.”

  Sassy’s friend Christie walked in. Christie was in her early forties, but like so many women in New York she looked about ten or fifteen years younger. She had dewy, perfect skin and lovely teeth.

  Perhaps Christie, who was a never-married single, could put it together for us.

  I said, “Christie, you’re beautiful, you’re young, and you’re perfect. Is it us”—I gestured to Sassy and me—“or is it true that men no longer look at women in a bar?”

  We’re Commodities Now

  Christie laughed nervously as she got the bartender’s attention. “It’s true. Guys don’t look at you in a bar. You can’t do that anymore. There’s very little interaction in real life,” she said as she ordered a round of white wine. “That’s just the age we live in.”

  Sassy and I nodded. Clearly we didn’t know the rules.

  “I’ve done everything. I’m on every dating app. Tinder. Match. Plenty of Fish. Bumble. I even met with a matchmaker. You don’t know what’s going to work, so you have to keep planting the seeds.”

  Was she having any luck?

  “I’ve met great guys, but the guys I like don’t like me. Sometimes I feel like there’s something wrong with me. If I could identify what it is, it might be easier to find someone.”

  She leaned in a little closer. “I think I need to sell myself more. Because no one is willing to buy me.”

  Sassy sipped thoughtfully on her drink. “Are you a commodity that needs to be bought?”

  Christie nodded. “I am a commodity. And I need to repackage myself.” She paused and looked around. “But doesn’t everyone feel that way? Even if you’re in a relationship with your friends you’re a commodity.”

  “Look,” she continued. “I love my life the way it is. I love my job, I love my friends. But I want that something extra. That’s the only thing I feel like I’m missing out on. Maybe it’s because I’ve never had that for myself, but I want that missing piece.”

  Keep Playing

  As I sat down to write, I realized that as long as women still wanted men, and as long as there was still a chance to get one, even if the odds were gamed against them, women would keep playing.

  I took the discussion to the young-youngs. Meaning they were too young to drink, too young to vote, and probably too young to be on dating apps like Tinder.

  “As soon as I broke up with my boyfriend, I joined Tinder again because he’d made me delete my profile when I was with him,” said the sixteen-year-old. “And immediately I started feeling good. All these people were liking my pictures.”

  “It’s the attention. The attention makes you think everything in your life is great,” said the seventeen-year-old. She leaned back in her chair and sipped her latte. “I always say this. All social media is like a drug. I know that every time I get a like on Instagram my body is flooded with endorphins.”

  “Listen.” The sixteen-year-old looked me in the eye. “A lot of the time you have a hookup. And you’re fine with it just being a hookup. You don’t want anything more. But then the guy starts bothering you. And all you want to do is go back on Tinder. Because on Tinder, it’s all about the chase.”

  Tinder Always Wins

  Emma called me up. “What’s the takeaway?” she asked.

  The word “takeaway” made me uneasy. It made me think of fast-food restaurants and those giant menus lit up with photographs of mouthwatering food.

  I wondered if this was the future of dating: Takeaway. People would become items to be ordered from a menu. Like a hamburger done exactly your way.

  I was still pondering this when Jude texted me and asked if I wanted to see Henry IV at two o’clock at the Brooklyn Academy of Music on Saturday. He’d already purchased the tickets.

  I couldn’t say no.

  And so, on a cold Saturday I got into a taxi and headed to Brooklyn.

  The taxi ride was thirty dollars, but I didn’t mind. Jude had paid for the tickets, and they probably cost a lot more than that. I reminded myself to split the ticket price with him.

  I got to the theater and went inside.

  And then, like the classic sad sack who’s about to be stood up, I looked around at all the people. And as they eventually paired off, I realized Jude was not coming.

  I texted him: Hey, did we mess up? I’m at BAM. And then, for reasons still unknown to me, I added: Eeeeee.

  I wasn’t really expecting to hear from Jude again, but I did. That evening I got a text: Oh fuck wow I had no idea how late it was. I am so, so sorry. I ended up in the ER last night.

  I sighed. Of course you did.

  For a moment, I was curious about this so-called ER adventure. But the moment passed. And then I realized I, too, had become Tinderized. Because I just didn’t care.

  Apparently Jude did, though. The next day, I got another text:

  Hey sorry for the rushed message. I just got home from the hospital and had no idea it was so late and had a ton of messages/voice mails . . . so so so sorry for screwing up our plans! Totally understand if you’re really pissed at me . . . I’ve been a mess. I was out last night and did too many drugs and got really drunk and apparently tried to get into someone’s car thinking it was mine a
nd the cops came and almost arrested me (I was handcuffed for a bit) and then sent me to the ER. I think they may have sedated me or something because I ended up unconscious for about 12 hours. Again, so sorry I was really looking forward to it and am pretty pissed at myself.

  I texted him back: Glad you’re okay, followed by a smiley face.

  And then I laughed. I’d been brilliantly played by Tinder. Tinder is the house, and the house always wins.

  The Russian Explains It All

  I was outside, taking a break from a black-tie dinner at the Cipriani on Forty-Second Street when I noticed a woman standing on the steps between the columns of the old bank. She was tall and lean with masses of hair, dressed like a woman warrior in a second-skin cocktail dress and thigh-high wrapped leather boots.

  I was gaping at her, of course. She saw me staring and came over.

  “Got a light?” she asked with a Russian accent.

  “Sure,” I said.

  We stood for a moment in silence, watching the 1 percent come and go in their town cars and SUVs.

  “Tell me something,” I said. “Are you on Tinder?”

  “Of course,” she laughed.

  “But why? You’re beautiful. You don’t look like you need to go on Tinder.”

  She nodded in agreement and then beckoned me closer.

  “You want to know the secret to Tinder?”

  “Yes?”

  “When you go on it you get lots more Instagram followers.”

  I stared at her. “Really? That’s it? It’s all about Instagram followers? But what about . . . all the women who are going on it to find relationships? And then they meet guys, but they don’t get a second date? Or else the guy likes her, but she doesn’t like him?”

  The Russian turned. “That?” she asked. “You know the answer to that.”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t.”

  “It’s because women never change. It’s the same old story.” She paused to flick away her cigarette. “We women don’t know what we want!”

  And with a laugh of triumph, she spun around and was gone.

  For a moment, I just stood there. Was she right? Was it really as simple as that hoary old paternalistic cliché?

  And then I realized she was wrong. Because women do know what they want. And mostly, it seems, what they want is simple. A modicum of respect. To be treated, as Hannah said, like a human being.

  I held out my hand for an old-fashioned yellow taxi.

  “Where to?” the driver asked.

  I smiled.

  Home.

  chapter four

  Get Ready Ladies: The Cubs Are Coming to Town

  Recently, out in the Village, Marilyn had a tangle with a twenty-one-year-old boy-cub. The guy came to her house to deliver some boxes, and apparently he was the friendly type, because he began chatting her up. After fifteen minutes, she finally managed to shoo him out of the house by reminding him for the sixth time that she had a conference call.

  She did her call and forgot all about the delivery boy—until 6:00 p.m. when he texted her.

  You’re so beautiful, he wrote. Can we hang out? Or is twenty-one too young for you?

  Yes, it is too young, she wrote back.

  Immediately she got another text: Ouch! That’s harsh.

  We brushed the incident off as an anomaly, but two days later Sassy had a similar encounter. She went to hear an opera singer at a private party hosted by a society lady of a certain age. When the concert ended and all the middle-aged people hurried to their cars to get home in time for a good night’s sleep, Sassy was approached by the twenty-two-year-old son of the society lady who’d been lurking in the background with his friends. “Hey,” he whispered. “Do you want to go to a club?”

  And then it happened to Queenie. She hired a twenty-four-year-old intern for the summer. He’d barely worked past Fourth of July before he confessed that he found her incredibly sexy and tried to kiss her.

  Which made me wonder: Are middle-aged women now catnip for younger men?

  At first the idea seemed impossible. After all, for years, the very idea that a younger man would be attracted to a woman ten, twenty, even thirty years older was unimaginable­—to the point where it was nearly considered a crime against nature.

  Plus, while there are a zillion movies depicting the older man/much younger woman dynamic, for decades there was only one movie depicting the opposite: The Graduate.

  However, unlike the older man/younger woman movie thing where they ride off into the sunset to live (somehow given their thirty-year age difference) happily ever after, The Graduate turns out to be pretty bad for everyone involved.

  The message of this movie is clear: ladies, don’t you ever, ever, ever try this at home.

  And so, for about twenty years, no self-respecting woman did, until the eighties came along. Suddenly, there were “cougars”—older women who dared to have sex or at least be attracted to hot young men who were called boy toys—often depicted as pumped-up young men in black shorty shorts and greased muscles. Everyone made fun of them and rightly so: they were ridiculous. You’d look at them and wonder: If I have sex with a boy toy how will I get that greasy-thick Vaseline mixed with sweat off my sheets in the morning?

  Now another thirty years have passed. And thanks to pornography, things have changed. In 2007, the most googled porn request was “MILF”—mothers I’d like to fuck.

  In other words, there is now a whole generation of young men who’ve been turned on by the idea, at least, of sex with a woman twenty and possibly thirty years older.

  And why not? Due to exercise, hair extensions, Botox and filler, healthy eating, and advanced skin care, even if a woman is technically too old to bear a child, she can still look like she can.

  Making her the perfect candidate for a cubbing experience.

  Catnips versus Cougars

  Instead of being about older women in pursuit of younger men—like it was in The Graduate—cubbing is about younger men in pursuit of older women. And while the word “cougar” conjures the stereotype of a hardened woman who dresses too young for her age, catnips tend to be nice, practical women from the city, the suburbs, anywhere really, and they are very, very likely to be someone’s mom from school.

  But then something happens, and all of a sudden a sensible woman finds herself in the middle of an unintended cub situation.

  Take Joanne. She was attending a dinner at Queenie’s house when it happened. Queenie had hired a chef. Like so many situations these days in which millennials are doing the jobs much older people used to do, the chef was twenty-seven. Joanne and the chef happened to look into each other’s eyes, and bam.

  Unintended cub collision.

  Perhaps it all would have been fine—if the guy hadn’t been Queenie’s niece’s boyfriend. Queenie was understandably pissed. Joanne said he was fair game. Sides were taken. But who knows what the etiquette is even supposed to be in this situation?

  I ran into Joanne in the city three months after she’d been caught with the cub. I assumed she and the cub had parted ways.

  Nope. The opposite was true.

  She was not only dating him, but he had also been living in her apartment for the past three months. “We were shacking up,” she said with a little shrug. “It was really, really fun.” But now, she informed me, he was getting his own place.

  She looked a little embarrassed and vulnerable. I could see that she’d let herself fall in love with him and no doubt was wondering if the fact that he was getting his own place meant he was about to break up with her. I could feel her shame: at fiftysomething, shouldn’t we all know better by now?

  Absolutely not. A few more months passed and Kitty ran into them shopping for appliances. They were still together.

  Because in the new world of cubbing, some men do stick around. Or even worse, fall in
love.

  And yet, not all cubbing goes so smoothly. From your first unexpected cub pounce to housing your cub in the Cub Club and then to the possibility of walking down the aisle—look at you with your younger husband—there are lots of horrifying pitfalls along the way. Like: what if you wake up with a cub at “his” house and it turns out you know his parents?

  Oops. This nearly happened to Tilda Tia a month ago.

  You don’t want it to happen to you.

  La Cubbette—C’est Vous

  What’s tricky about this cubbing phenomenon is that it can happen to any woman, even a woman who has never considered the idea of being with a younger man.

  Take Kitty. All her life, she’s been attracted to older men. Ten, fifteen, even twenty years older, like her soon-to-be ex-husband. “I like men who are intelligent. Who have something to say. I can’t imagine finding that in a twenty-five-year-old.”

  Little did we know how quickly she’d change her mind.

  It happened at a small birthday party for one of Kitty’s still-married friends. This married friend, Alison, was someone Kitty had spent a lot of time with when she was married. She was also one of the few friends from Kitty’s former married life who still invited her to parties.

  After six months, Kitty was beginning to realize that all those nasty things people told you about being sectionorced were true: friends took sides and you kept hearing about gatherings you were no longer invited to.

  At the party, Kitty tried to reassure these still-married couples that she was okay and doing fine. They tried to reassure her, too. The men took her aside and told her that they’d always thought her ex-husband was a jerk, while the women crowded around her in the kitchen and told her she would find someone better.

  During dinner, the talk once again turned to Kitty and her new relationship status. There was lots of clueless married talk about online dating and whether or not it worked and whether or not Kitty should try it.