Is There Still Sex in the City?

by Candace Bushnell

  Later, at the dinner, like we were already a couple, we told this story to the F. Scotts. “You could both do a lot worse,” they said.

  And so began a whirlwind boyfriend experience. MNB did everything right. He did everything a woman should want when it comes to romance. He sent flowers. He took me to see Hello, Dolly! and walked me back home singing, “Hello, Candace!” He took me on island vacations. We had couple massages and did yoga. He said, “I know you haven’t been spoiled in a long time and I want to spoil you.”

  “But why?” I asked.

  “Because you deserve to be spoiled.”

  In the mornings, I’d look down at the pretty bowl of cut-up fruit he’d prepared for me for breakfast and think, Why me?

  “I don’t get it,” I said to Sassy. “How did I meet this great age-appropriate guy who has his own money and his own house and is really nice . . . and he wants to be my boyfriend?”

  She said, “Honey, you’ve worked hard, you’ve done the work, and you deserve it.”

  Perhaps I had, but we all know that just because a woman deserves something good, it doesn’t always mean she’s going to get it.

  Did I deserve to be spoiled by a wonderful single man who didn’t appear to have anything glaringly wrong with him? Of course I did.

  And so does every other woman. But how often does it happen? Almost never.

  Why should the universe have singled me out for this particular carnival ride?

  And then Marilyn called. “I think I might have a new boyfriend,” she said.

  When I’m Sixty-Four

  Like me and MNB, they, too, had met at a party in the Hamptons. And like me and MNB, it turned out that they, too, knew lots of people in common but had never met.

  Until now. At the party, they talked for three hours. The next day, he called her up and asked if she wanted to go for a walk on the beach. They went at sunset and the sky was pink, and it turned out he lived near the beach and he was a surfer.

  He also had an apartment in Brooklyn and a cool tech business that made environmental designs.

  And he was sixty-four.

  Was that too old? Marilyn wondered.

  I pointed out that sixty-four was the current age of her last ex-boyfriend, with whom she’d broken up several years ago. Meaning that even though sixty-four “sounded” old, in reality, it was just the current age of people we used to know when we all were younger.

  In any case, it didn’t matter. Because the best thing about this guy was that he really listened. And he really cared. And most of all, he, too, was really, really nice.

  Nice Guys Finally Finish First?

  And so, after all those years of barely dating, Marilyn and I somehow had boyfriends. We couldn’t believe it. And neither could our friends.

  Gathering at Kitty’s to analyze these new developments, we made a list of the MNB attributes:

  MNBs are nice guys. And they’re known in the world as being nice. There isn’t a string of bad gossip attached to their names. There are no rumors of them having cheated; there aren’t people going around muttering under their breath, “Yeah, but he’s an asshole.” They don’t have a string of ex-wives who hate them.In fact, “nice” is the hallmark personality trait of the MNB. And while nice didn’t matter so much in one’s twenties and thirties, now it is about the best quality a person can have. Nice is safety from the storm in a world that, it turns out, is not so very nice after all.

  They’re grown-ups. They have their own lives and their own places to live. Which means they know how to do everyday stuff. Like shopping. And washing the dishes and doing the laundry. And feeding themselves.

  They’re not alcoholics or drug addicts.

  They’re interested in being with women who are their age.

  * * *

  Take Marilyn’s friend, Bob. He’s sixty-six and kind of looks it but is vibrant and attractive and curious. He told a story about being pursued by a thirty-three-year-old woman, who would show up at his house unexpectedly when he didn’t text her back. He had to explain to her at least five times that he wasn’t interested. Her attention was flattering but also annoying, especially as Bob doesn’t kid himself about where he is in life. “Look at me,” he said. “Yes, I’m in decent shape. But I look old enough to be her father. I am old enough to be her father. What’s wrong with her?”

  And here’s the difference between an MNB and a hot-drop. The hot-drop is easily seduced by the younger woman, usually a woman who wants to start the reproductive cycle with him. The MNB is at a different place in his life. He’s not looking to reproduce. Nor are the women he dates.

  Like Carla, fifty-four. She had a high-powered career in the city, but due to the usual vagaries of life ended up single and in the Village with her teenage son. She started her own small firm, which is flourishing. She’s got it all together. Or appears to, anyway.

  What Carla is looking for in a partner is defined by what she’s not looking for this time around. “I’m 255not looking for a guy to take care of me. I’m not looking for a guy to put a roof over my head. And I’m not looking to get married.” Carla’s marriage was, she says, “damaging” and an experience that at this point she doesn’t want to repeat. On the other hand, she doesn’t want to be alone.

  “I want someone to be an equal,” she says. “They’ve got to carry their share of the load. And they’ve got to be there emotionally. Because what I’ve found in life is that shit happens to all of us, and it’s just a little better if you don’t have to go through it alone.”

  And that’s the other reality about dating in middle age. Shit does happen. You are dealing with people who have not only gone through stuff but may be going through it while you’re just getting to know them. Chances are, someone’s going to lose a parent. Someone’s going to lose a job. Someone’s going to lose a friend.

  In this case, I was that someone.

  A Cancer Christmas Tree

  My father was dying. He’d survived cancer for twenty years, but now it was back.

  He called me up. He told me how he’d gone to get a scan that revealed every nook and cranny of where 256the cancer had spread and the results weren’t good. “Candy,” he said. “My body was lit up like a Christmas tree.”

  I went to visit him. He drove us to a restaurant, the same restaurant where we’d have the luncheon after the church and before we went to the graveyard on the day of my father’s upcoming funeral. He had it all planned out and he wanted to tell me about it.

  The host led us to a table next to the window. My father was joking and charming, the way he always was. I sat down stiffly and looked out the window. Across the street was the building where my mother and her best friend started their first business, a travel agency. On Wednesdays, when school got out early, I’d take the bus an extra stop and visit my mother at her office. I can still remember the smell of paper and new carpet and fresh paint and how she and her best friend were so proud to be businesswomen.

  I looked back at my father, at his gnarled hand—so similar in shape and appearance to my own—and realized I wasn’t sure I could do this. Talk to my father about his funeral while being in a MAM sectione.

  I’d recently had a series of setbacks, as my father might say. I was scared about my finances and I was scared about my future.

  257But I was also scared for my father to know that I was in a bad place. My father had always been proud of me. I didn’t want him to die thinking that I was a failure after all.

  I told him that I’d finally met someone.

  I always told my father about my boyfriends. In fact, I went further and made an effort to introduce them to the poor man.

  This was, on the face of it, probably not a good idea. My father prided himself on “knowing men” and most of them in his opinion were highly flawed. He had once chased one of my sister’s boyfriends off the property—a suburban lawn—because he was a bad boy who only wanted on
e thing.

  And yet, for some reason, I continued to bring boyfriends home to meet my father. Afterward, my father would shake his head. “Mama’s boy,” he’d said about one. “Completely selfish,” he’d said about another. “Do you notice how everything is ‘his’ and ‘mine’?” When the inevitable breakup would occur, my father always congratulated me on having gotten away from someone who wasn’t quite good enough.

  “Well,” my father said, as I finished telling him about MNB. “He sounds like a gentleman.” He paused. “Tell him that I would have loved to meet him, but I’m afraid I can’t.”

  * * *

  258And so the day came. I called up MNB. “My father died,” I said, and then I cried a little.

  “I’m coming right over,” he said.

  As I waited, I realized that while I was prepared for my dad’s passing, I hadn’t considered the possibility of going through this sad and incredibly personal moment with a relative stranger.

  MNB had never met my father or my family. What was the protocol?

  “I’ll be there for you however you’d like,” he said. “You tell me what you need me to do and I’ll do it.”

  I thought about what was ahead. The long drive. The three-hour viewing with an open casket. The overnight at the B&B and then the funeral and lunch and then the cemetery, where my father would be laid to rest next to my mother, my uncle, my grandmother, grandfather, and great-grandmother. And there would be the old friends, the few who were left, and a handful of relatives.

  It wouldn’t be fun. On the other hand, it would be nicer to have him by my side. Did I know him well enough to ask? Did I trust him enough to take the chance?

  I asked anyway. “Will you come with me to the funeral?”

  “I’d love to,” he said.

  It was that easy.

  259It had been a lousy autumn and the leaves were brown as we drove up to Connecticut.

  “It’s going to be okay,” MNB said, as he squeezed my hand. “Remember, we’re in this together.”

  And even though it was a crappy moment in life, I realized it could have been a hell of a lot worse.

  I squeezed back.

  “I love you,” I said.

  “I love you, too.”

  Of course, we had no idea if we actually meant it. Or what it meant if we did. Who does ever know? But maybe that’s one of the good things about middle age: some things don’t change.

  chapter nine

  The Super Middles

  On the other hand, plenty of other things do change.

  Somewhere in the middle of the new middle age, people begin to fall into two categories: the “super middles” and “everyone else.”

  Everyone else is pretty easy to spot. They’re like most of us who look in the mirror and do not recognize our own faces. This one degree of facial separation is one of nature’s mysterious tricks, and no matter what you do, few can escape it. At the same time, there’s a certain democracy about it. In the middle-aged softening, you can’t really tell who was a beauty in their twenties from someone who was plain; nor can you believe that the bald guy who now looks like a potato was once a hot stud. And vice versa. He can’t believe you ever had long hair and a body someone would want to see in a bikini. In this syndrome, it’s common to go to parties and run into old friends whom you haven’t seen for a while and who don’t recognize you. Happily, you’ll find yourself able to return the favor all too often.

  At first, this one-degree-of-separation recognition gives life a slightly surreal edge, but one soon gets used to it. Indeed, it becomes just another middle-aged conundrum to bond over.

  Scattered throughout the crowd, however, will be another category of middle-ager altogether. They “haven’t aged at all” and look “exactly the same.” Indeed, due to a diligent health routine and the right cosmetic touches, they may even appear to have aged backward.

  Meet the “super middles.” They are like they were before, but better.

  Take Carl. Twenty years ago when he was living the reproductive lifestyle, Carl was a mess. He was out of shape, anxiety ridden, and he had the energy of a jack-in-the-box. Now he’s confident and fit, wearing designer Italian. He’s got all his hair, which helps. He drives a fast convertible and looks good doing it.

  Most of Carl’s once-successful friends, however, burned out. Like sensible middle-agers, they now spend their afternoons golfing and their mornings going to doctors. Not Carl. He started his own company, which requires him to spend a lot of time with cool people in their thirties.

  Yes, Carl is annoying because it is annoying to have conversations about “cool thirtysomething people” whom no one older than fifty actually cares about. But still, you have to admire the guy.

  And then there’s Victor. He was an eight-hundred-dollar-an-hour corporate lawyer until he got sectionorced, got fired, hit bottom, and charged back up, realizing his true calling was to help others.

  He got his pilot’s license, bought a small plane, and now flies it to disaster areas in need of supplies.

  Victor is a good person.

  And this, indeed, is the hallmark of the super middles. They are trying to be better people, not just physically, but spiritually, psychologically, and psychically. They are about improvement and a determined happiness. This time, they’re going to get things right.

  Like Marilyn’s new friend, Rebecca.

  Ten years ago, Rebecca was one of those “I don’t know how she does it” women. Then she hit fifty. Her husband lost his job, they got sectionorced, and then she lost her job and went through a typical MAM period, during which she filled her time drinking and engaging with inappropriate men. One night, when a guy she’d pinned her hopes on told her he was seeing two other women as well, she became enraged and slapped him across the face. He socked her in the shoulder and sent her reeling. There was a police report. Then she was caught outside the school grounds driving over the limit and that was it.

  She stopped drinking and started exercising—boxing at first because she was so angry—and slowly her life started to turn around.

  She’s now training for a mini triathlon and has started another business helping women make investments. It’s doing so well she recently bought a bigger house.

  The biggest change is that she is no longer angry at herself. When she drank too much or ate too much or just in general fucked up, she would berate herself continually, and now she feels so much happier because she doesn’t have to waste time being angry at herself for fucking up. Did I get it?

  Yes I nodded. I did.

  And because she got it, Rebecca had just found her own MNB, a super middle guy named Brad.

  Like Rebecca, he was an extreme exerciser, dedicated to an hour of Qigong a day, along with waterskiing and yoga. And because he was a super middle, he wasn’t afraid to express his feelings for Rebecca—he thought she might be the one—nor was he afraid of commitment.

  Indeed, in true super middle style, Brad wanted to move in with her even though they’d only been seeing each other for four months.

  He also wanted to introduce her to his family.

  Marilyn and I were at Kitty’s one afternoon when Rebecca came roaring in. Brad, being super middle perfect, had chartered a private plane to take Rebecca to a family reunion at their compound in Maine.

  We all congratulated her on her extreme good luck. Exclamations of “that’s wonderful” and “what are you going to wear?” echoed around the kitchen.

  “But I don’t want to go,” Rebecca said.

  She was angry he’d even asked. Thinking he was making some kind of romantic gesture, he’d sprung this outing on her out of the blue, when she already had plans for the weekend. Plans with friends that she didn’t want to cancel. Plans that Brad should have remembered. Why should she cancel plans with her old friends to go hang out with strangers?

  But they wouldn’t exactly be strangers we pointed out
. They were Brad’s relatives, the implication being that they might someday be her own.

  “They’re still strangers,” she countered.

  And around and around it went, with all of the women taking the side of the “relationship” over the fact that Rebecca selfishly, we assumed, didn’t want to go to Maine for the weekend. Because selfishness is not allowed, especially when a super middle man of solvent means is concerned.

  And so, Rebecca went to the family reunion and she was miserable but she thought it would pass.

  Two weeks later, Brad began moving his stuff in.

  Marilyn and I went to a party at Rebecca’s new house to celebrate Brad, the house, and the new vistas that middle age were opening up. All you had to do was to look around at the guests to believe it. Everyone was attractive and gleefully admitted to being older than they appeared. The men had biceps and the women had those tight glutes and quads that look good in exercise pants. Everyone was doing something somewhat important and meaningful with their lives and that was what counted. The room was filled with platitudes, happy clichés, and laughter.

  “It’s all about beautiful, healthy people coming together,” Rebecca declared. “Age is irrelevant now and we’re all in new territory. There are no rules. Relationships can be anything.”

  Except when they can’t.

  At some point, after Marilyn and I left the party to go home to get a good super middle’s night’s sleep, Brad went “crazy” and started dancing and doing his Elvis Presley imitation. Perhaps this would have been okay, but Rebecca’s twenty-two-year-old daughter came home in the middle of it and declared Brad’s impersonation a sight she could never unsee and ran into her room and locked the door. Rebecca tried to soothe her daughter but gave up and instead spent three hours cleaning up the party mess while Brad lay on the couch watching TV.