Relationship In Love

New York’s Last Seduction: Loving Mr. Big

A fortyish movie producer I’ll call Samantha Jones walked into Bowery Bar, and, as usual, we all looked up to see whom she was with. Samantha was always with at least four men, and the game was to pick out which one was her love. Of course, it wasn’t really much of a game, because the boyfriend was too easy to spot. Invariably, he was the youngest, and good-looking in that B-Hollywood actor kind of way—and he would sit there with a joyously stupid expression on his face (if he had just met Sam) or a bored, stupid look on his face, if he had been out with her a few times. If he had, it would be beginning to dawn on him that no one at the table was going to talk to him. Why should they, when he was going to be history in two weeks?
We all admired Sam. First of all, it’s not that easy to get twenty-five-year-old guys when you’re in your early forties. Second, Sam is a New York inspiration. Because if you’re a successful single woman in this city, you have two choices: You can beat your head against the wall trying to find a relationship, or you can say “screw it” and just go out and have sex like a man. Thus: Sam.
This is a real question for women in New York these days. For the first time in Manhattan history, many women in their thirties to early forties have as much money and power as men—or at least enough to feel like they don’t need a man, except for sex. While this paradox is the topic of many an analytic hour, recently my friendCarrie, a journalist in her mid-thirties, decided, as a group of us were having tea at the Mayfair Hotel, to try it out in the real world. To give up on love, as it were, and throttle up on power, in order to find contentment. And, as we’ll see, it worked. Sort of.

Testosterone Women, Foolish Men
“I think I’m turning into a man,” said Carrie. She lit up her twentieth cigarette of the day, and when the maitre d’hotel ran over and told her to put it out, she said, “Why, I wouldn’t dream of offending anyone.” Then she put the cigarette out on the carpet.
“You remember when I slept with that guy Drew?” she asked. We all nodded. We were all relievedwhen she had, because she hadn’t had sex for months before that. “Well afterwards, I didn’t feel a thing. I was like, Gotta go to work, babe. Keep in touch. I completely forgot about him after that.”
“Well, why the hell should you feel anything?” Magda asked. “Men don’t. I don’t feel anything after I have sex. Oh sure, I’d like to, but what’s the point?”
We all sat back smugly, sipping tea, like we were members of some special club. We were hard and proud of it, and it hadn’t been easy to get to this point—this place of complete independence where we had the luxury of treating men like sex objects. It had taken hard work, loneliness, and the realization that, since there might never be anyone there for you, you had to take care of yourself in every sense of the word.
“Well, I guess it’s a lot of scar tissue,” I said. “All those men who end up disappointing you. After a while, you don’t even want to have feelings anymore. You just want to get on with your life.”
“I think it’s hormones,” said Carrie. “The other day, I was in the salon getting a deep-conditioning treatment because they’re always telling me my hair is going to break off. And I read in Cosmo about male testosterone in women—this study found that women who have high levels of testosterone are more aggressive, successful, have more sex partners, and are less likely to get married. There was something incredibly comforting about this information—it made you feel like you weren’t a freak.”
“The trick is getting the men to cooperate,” said Charlotte.
“Men in this city fail on both counts,” said Magda. “They don’t want to have a relationship, but as soon as you only want them for sex, they don’t like it. They can’t just perform the way they’re supposed to.”
“Have you ever called a guy at midnight and said, ‘I want to come over,’ and had him say yes?”Carrie asked.
“The problem is that sex doesn’t stay done,” said Charlotte. She had a name for men who were fantastic lovers: Sex Gods. But even she was having trouble. Her most recent conquest was a poet who was terrific in bed, but who, she said, “kept wanting me to go to dinner with him and go through all the chat bit.” He’d recently stopped calling: “He wanted to read me his poetry, and I wouldn’t let him.”
“There’s a thin line between attraction and repulsion,” she continued. “And usually the repulsion starts when they begin wanting you to treat them as people, instead of sex toys.”
I asked if there was realistically any way to pull off this whole “women having sex like men” thing.
“You’ve got to be a real bitch,” said Charlotte. “Either that, or you’ve got to be incredibly sweet and nice. We fall through the cracks. It confuses men.”
“It’s too late for sweet,” Carrie said.
“Then I guess you’re just going to have to become a bitch,” Magda said. “But there’s one thing you forgot.”
“What?”
“Falling in love.”
“I don’t think so,” Carrie said. She leaned back in her chair. She was wearing jeans and an old Yves Saint Laurent jacket. She sat like a man, legs apart. “I’m going to do it—I’m going to become a real bitch.”
We looked at her and laughed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You’re already a bitch.”

Meeting Mr. Big
As part of her research, Carrie went to see The Last Seduction at three in the afternoon. She had heard that the movie portrayed a woman who, in pursuit of money and hot sex and absolute control, uses and abuses every man she meets—and never has a regret or one of those expected “Oh my God, what have I done?” epiphanies.
Carrie never goes to movies—she had a WASPy mother who told her that only poor people with sick kids send their kids to the movie theater—so it was a big deal for her. She got to the theater later, and when the ticket taker told her the movie had already started, she said, “Fuck you. I’m here for research—you don’t think I’d actually go see this movie, do you?”
When she came out, she kept thinking about the scene where Linda Fiorentino picks up the man in the bar and has sex with him in the parking lot, gripping a chain-link fence. Was that what it was all about?
Carrie bought two pairs of strappy scandals and got her hair cut off.
On a Sunday evening, Carrie went to a cocktail party thrown by the designer Joop—one of those parties that should be in a movie, with everyone crowded in and the gay boys so lively, and even though Carrie had to work the next day, she knew she’d eventually have too many drinks and go home too late. Carrie doesn’t like to go home at night and she doesn’t like to go to sleep.
Mr. Joop cleverly ran out of champagne halfway though the party, and people were baning on the kitchen door and begging the waiters for a glass of wine. A man walked by with a cigar in his mouth, and one of the men Carrie was talking to said, “Oooooh. Who’s that again? He looks like a younger, better-looking Ron Perelman.”
“I know who it is.” Carrie said.
“Who?”
“Mr. Big.”
“I knew that. I always get Mr. Big and Perelman mixed up.”
“How much will you give me,” Carrie asked. “How much will you give me if I go over and talk to him?” She does this new thing she’s doing now with her short hair. She fluffs it up while the boys look at her and laugh. “You’re crazy,” they say.
Carrie had seen Mr. Big once before, but she didn’t think he’d remember her. She wsa in this office where she works sometimes, and Inside Edition was interviewing her about something she wrote about Chihuahuas. Mr. Big came in and started talking to the cameraman about how Chihuahuas were all over Paris, and Carrie leaned over and tightened the lace on her boot.
At the party, Mr. Big was sitting on the radiator in the living room. “Hi,” Carrie said. “Remember me?” She could tell by his eyes that he had no idea who she was, and she wondered if he was going to panic.
He twirled the cigar around the inside of his lips and took it out of his mouth. He looked away to flick his ash, then looked back at her. “Abso-fucking-lutely.”

Another Mr. Big (At Elaine’s)
Carrie didn’t run into Mr. Big again for several days. In the meantime, something was definitelyhappening. She bumped into a wirter friend she hadn’t seen for two months, and he said, “What’s going on with you? You look completely different.”
“I do?”
“You look like Heather Locklear. Did you get your teeth fixed?”
Then she was at Elaline’s, and a big writer, a big one, someone she’d never met, gave her the finger and then sat down next to her and said, “You’re not at tough as you think you are.”
“Excuse me?”
“You walk around like you’re so fucking great in bed.”
She wanted to say, “I do?”—but instead she laughed and said, “Well, maybe I am.”
He lit her cigarette. “If I wanted to have an affair with you, it would have to last a long time. I wouldn’t want a one-night stand.”
“Well, baby,” she said, “you’ve got the wrong girl.”
Then she went to a party after one of those Peggy Siegal movie openings and ran into a big movieproducer, another big one, and he gave her a ride in his car to Bowery Bar. But Mr. Big ws there.
Mr. Big slid into the banquette next to her. Their sides were touching.
Mr. Big said, “So. What have you been doing lately?”
“Besides going out every night?”
“Yeah—what do you do for work?”
“This is my work,” she said. “I’m researching a story for a friend of mine about women who have sex like men. You know, they have sex and afterwards they feel nothing.”
Mr. Big eyed her. “But you’re not like that,” he said.
“Aren’t you?” she asked.
“Not a drop. Not even half a drop,” he said.
Carrie looked at Mr. Big. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Oh, I get it,” said Mr. Big. “You’ve never been in love.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“And you have?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely.”
They went back to his apartment. Mr. Big opened a bottle of Crystal champagne. Carrie ws laughing and carrying on and then she said, “I have to go.”
“It’s four A.M.,” he said. He stood up. “I’m not going to let you go home now.”
He gave her a T-shirt and boxer shorts. He went into the bathroom while she changed. She got into the bed and lay back against the down pillows. She closed her eyes. His bed was so comfortable. It was the most comfortable bed she’d ever been in in her life.
When he came back into the bedroom, she was sound asleep.