Кэндес Бушнелл - Four Blondes

In fact, I'm convinced there's a direct correlation between talking too much and being bad at sex.

At the bar, I met a man named Sonny Snoot, an extremely good-looking hairstylist.

"Great color," he said. When I looked at him blankly, he said, "Your hair. You must be American. From New York. They just seem to know how to do that great ashy blond.”

"I'm just happy that I have all my hair," I said.

And then I laughed, "Har, har, har," and he laughed, "Har, har, har," and before you could say "blow job," he was yapping about sex.

"This is the way it is," he said. "If sex is number one in Italy, ifs number seven in London. If sex doesn't fall a man's way, he'll go off and do something else. But men talk about sex all the time. In fact, one of the reasons to have sex is to talk about it the next day. And we talk about it in minute detail and make the story really good.

"Sometimes," he continued, "you get the urge to talk about sex while you're actually doing it. For instance, if you're doing a weird position, you kind of want to call your mates on your cell phone and say, 'Guess what I'm doing now?' “

"Oral sex," I suggested.

"Oh no," Sonny said, shaking his head. "The Americans, they're all very horny. But we don't do that here.”

At dinner, I sat next to Peter, a magazine editor. Peter's girlfriend had just moved in with him, and he couldn't stop talking about how happy he was. "We've known each other for ten years, of course,”

he said. "But one morning, when she was going back to her apartment, she just said, 'I think we should move in together.' And as soon as she said it, I knew she was right. So now we've bought an apartment together. Englishmen don't patently object to marriage or commitment the way American men do," he said proudly. "If s very easy to find a relationship here.”

Yeah, if you've got ten years.

"Of course, I don't know what it would be like for an American woman," he continued. "You know, American women are neurotic about their careers, while Englishwomen are only neurotic about sex,”

he said, as if this were a good thing. "Englishwomen don't like it. Well, maybe they would like it, but they think that men are only after the one thing." Maybe it was the champagne, but Peter seemed to be getting what the English call "stroppy.”

“Englishwomen suffer from this half-baked feminism. They think they're really open about sex, but then—aha—they find out they have the same hang-ups their mothers did.”

“Well, maybe there's a reason for that," I ventured. "Maybe if you'd stop talking—”

Peter cut me off. "Women here think that any adventure in the bedroom is only for male pleasure!”

he said triumphantly.

The chatty Englishman problem continued to plague me to the nightclub China White, where I attempted to take refuge in one of the private Moroccan-style rooms with my friend Sophie, who worked in documentaries and lived in Notting Hill. I had just settled against the cushions with a bottle of vodka when I looked up and noticed a tall, dark-haired, shockingly good-looking man. Although these kinds of things supposedly don't happen in London, the man came over and sat down next to me. And then—so much for "English reserve"—I swear to God, he immediately launched into a conversation about sex.

"Everybody thinks if s the man's fault that women don't have orgasms. Why can't they just have them like ... like men?" he demanded.

"Actually, they can," I said, wondering if perhaps this was a come-on, and if so, what I should do about it.

"Oh yes. They're always saying they can, but then you're in bed with a woman, and she's just lying there like she's doing you a favor....”

"Now, where I come from, we sort of got over that in the sixties," I was saying, when suddenly Sophie jumped in.

"Oh please/' she snapped. "Don't listen to him. The first thing an Englishman does in bed is to try to flip you over. Because That’s how they're used to having sex. And they all say Englishwomen can't give good blow jobs. But if s only because they're used to getting them ... from boys!”

Sophie and the good-looking, dark-haired man sat glaring at each other. I wouldn't have minded this, but I was sitting between them, and I really wasn't in a mood to get clocked by a wayward punch. Luckily, at that moment The Fox poked his head in.

"Ooooh. Hello, Simon," he said, as his eyes narrowed. "Haven't seen you for a while.”

"Right. Well, I'm ... I'm having a baby," Simon said.

"Good for you. Then maybe you can stop chatting up my date!" The Fox grabbed my arm and pulled me out of there. "Listen," he said. "I spend most of my life with people who know fuck-all about fuck-all and deserve to be kicked to death. Most people are complete scum. Most people need someone to explain to them that their very existence is a nuisance!”

The Fox continued in this vein until we reached his house, where he insisted that I stay up with him until six in the morning, listening to obscure American cowboy music. And talking about it. At this point, I realized I needed to sleep. I also realized that the only way to get The Fox to stop talking was to drug him. Yes, I'm very sorry to say that I actually tried to slip Xanaxes into The Fox's glass of wine. Unfortunately, it all got mixed up, and I ended up passing out instead.

When I woke up the next afternoon, there was a note at the bottom of the bed: "Darling, never mind Shakespeare, I'm in love. Still crazy after all these hours. Love, The Fox. P.S. I didn't touch you." Englishmen are just ... so ... sweet!

I spent the next few days going to lunches and dinners and nightclubs. The thing That’s kind of weird about London is that even though people say they have jobs, no one ever seems to get any work done. I mean, how can they, when lunch begins at noon and goes until four o'clock? And usually involves several cocktails and a couple of bottles of wine? And then that Miranda person snuck into The Fox's apartment and really did steal all the lightbulbs. So when I had to get dressed to go out at night, I had to do it by feel.

And then there was no hot water.

And then I remembered that I was actually supposed to be doing something, like working, so I called my friend Claire.

Claire is an interior decorator—has been for five years, ever since her second husband ran off with her best friend. Claire is the only truly single girl I know in London. Meaning she hasn't had a real boyfriend for three years. Which pretty much makes her an honorary New York woman in my book. But unlike most New York women, Claire has already been married twice. And she's only thirty-seven. Did she really have that much to complain about? "Let me put it this way," she said. "I haven't had sex with anyone new in over a year. I've only had sex with old boyfriends. Which everyone knows doesn't count." We agreed to meet at Shoo House, one of these private clubs where people go in lieu of restaurants and bars.

I looked around at the clumps of men and women, all of whom seemed to be in their late twenties and thirties, and all of whom seemed to be dressed in varying shades of gray or black clothes that looked like they'd been plucked out of the dirty-clothes hamper. Right away, I realized I just wasn't getting the clothes bit right—I was wearing a Dolce & Gabbana coat with a cranberry fur collar. Everyone was drinking and laughing, but it didn't look like people were trying to pick each other up. "God," I said. "I feel like a desperate single woman.”

Claire looked around wildly. "Stop it. Don't ever say that. Women in London are not desperate. People don't understand things like that here. They'll think we're serious. We don't have men because we don't want to.”

"We don't?" I said.