Candace Bushnell: SEX and the CITY

Sam and I stood up to go. A writer who covers popular culture gave us a last piece of advice. "It's going to be pretty awful," he warned, though he had never been to such a place himself. "Unless you take control. You've got to take control of the place. You've got to make it happen."

Le Trapeze was located in a white stone building covered with graffiti. The entrance was discreet, with a rounded metal railing, a downmarket version of the entrance to the Royalton Hotel. A couple was coming out as we were going in, and when the woman saw us, she covered her face with the collar of her coat.

"Is it iftin?" I asked.

She looked at me in horror and ran into a taxi.

Inside, a dark-haired young man, wearing a striped rugby shirt, was sitting in a small booth. He looked like he was about eighteen. He didn't look up.

"Do we pay you?"

"It's eighty-five dollars a couple."

"Do you take credit cards?"

"Cash only."

"Can I have a receipt?"

"No."

We had to sign cards saying tha e t we'd abide by the rules of safe sex. We got temporary membership cards, which reminded us that no prostitution, no cameras, and no recording devices were allowed inside.

While I was expecting steamy sex, the first thing we saw were steaming tables—i.e., the aforementioned hot and cold buffet. Nobody was eating, and there was a sign above the buffet table that said, you must have your lower torso covered to eat. Then we saw the manager, Bob, a burly, bearded man in a plaid shirt and jeans who looked like he should have been managing a Pets 'R' Us store in Vermont. Bob told us the club had survived for fifteen years, because of its "discretion." "Also," he said, "here, no means no." He told us not to be worried about being voyeurs, that most people start off that way.

What did we see? Well, there was a big room with a huge air mattress, upon which a few blobby couples gamely went at it; there was a "sex chair" (unoccupied) that looked like a spider; there was a chubby woman in a robe, sitting next to a Jacuzzi, smoking; there were couples with glazed eyes (Night of the Living Sex Zombies, I thought); and there were many men who appeared to be having trouble keeping up their end of the bargain. But mostly, there were those damn steaming buffet tables (containing what— mini—hot dogs?), and unfortunately, that's pretty much all you need to know.

Le Trapeze was, as the French say, Le Rip-Off.

By one a.m., people were going home. A woman in a robe informed us she was from Nassau County and said we should come back Saturday night. "Saturday night," the woman said, "is a smorgasbord." I didn't ask if she was talking about the clientele—I was afraid she meant the buffet.

A couple of days later I was at a ladies' lunch at Mortimers. Once again, the talk turned to sex and my experiences at the

"Didn't you love it?" asked Charlotte, the English journalist. "I'd love to go to a place like that. Didn't it turn you on, watching all those people having

sex?"

"Nope," I said, stuffing my mouth with a corn fritter topped with salmon eggs.

"Why not?"

"You couldn't really see anything," I explained. "And the

men?"

"That was the worst part," I said. "Half of them looked like shrinks. I'll never be able to go to therapy again without imagining a bearded fat man lying naked and glassy-eyed on a mat on the floor, getting an hour-long blow job. And still not being able to come."

Yes, I told Charlotte, we did take our clothes off—but we wore towels. No, we didn't have sex. No, I didn't get turned on, even when a tall, attractive, dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties entered the rumpus room and caused a stir. She exposed her bottom like a monkey, and within minutes, she was lost in a tangle of arms and legs. It should have been sexy, but all I could think about were those National Geo-graphic nature films of mating baboons.

The truth is, exhibitionism and voyeurism are not mainstream events. And neither, for that matter, is S&M, despite what you may have recently read elsewhere. The problem, in the clubs, anyway, always comes down to the people. They're the actresses who can never find work; the failed opera singers, painters, and writers; the lower-management men who will never get to the middle. People who, should they corner you in a bar, will keep you hostage with tales of their ex-spouses and their digestive troubles. They're the people who can't negotiate the system. They're on the fringes, sexually and in life. They're not necessarily the people with whom you want to share your intimate fantasies.

Well, the people at Le Trapeze weren't all pale, pudgy sex zombies: Before we left the club, Sam and I ran into the attention-grabbing tall woman and her date in the locker

talkative: He was from Manhattan, he said, and had recently started his own business. He and the woman had been colleagues, he said. As the woman slipped into a yellow business suit, the man smiled and said, "She fulfilled her fantasy tonight." The woman glared at him and stalked out of the locker room.

A few days later, Sam called and I screamed at him. Then he asked, hadn't the whole thing been my idea?

Then he asked, hadn't I learned anything?

And I said yes, I had. I told him I had learned that when it comes to sex, there's no place like home.

But then you knew that, didn't you? Didn't you? Sam?

On a recent afternoon, seven women gathered in Manhattan, over wine, cheese, and cigarettes, to animatedly discuss the one thing they had in common: a man. Specifically, an Eligible Man of Manhattan, a man we'll call "Tom Peri."

Tom Peri is forty-three years old, five feet, ten inches tall, with straight brown hair. There is nothing remarkable about his appearance, save for a penchant, a few years ago, for dressing in black Armani suits paired with wacky suspenders. He comes from a wealthy manufacturing family and grew up on Fifth Avenue and in Bedford, New York. He lives in a modern high-rise on Fifth Avenue.

Over the last fifteen years, Peri, who is almost always referred to by his last name only, has become something of a legend in New York. He's not exactly a womanizer, because he's always trying to get married. Peri is, rather, one of the city's most accomplished serial daters, engaging in up to twelve «relationships» a year. But after two days or two months, the inevitable happens. Something goes wrong, and, he says, "I get dumped."

For a certain type of woman—thirtyish, ambitious, well placed socially— dating Peri, or avoiding his attentions, has become nothing less than a rite of passage, sort of like your first limo ride and your first robbery, combined.

Even among the city's other notorious ladies' men, Peri stands out. For one thing, he appears to be holding far fewer cards. He has neither the well— bred good looks of Count Erik Wachtmeister nor the free-flowing cash of Mort Zuckerman.

I wanted to know, What's Peri got?

Each of the women I contacted had been involved with Peri—either intimately or as an object of his ardent affections— and each said she had dumped him. None refused my request to get together for a session of Talking about Peri. Each woman, perhaps, had something. . unresolved about Peri. Maybe they wanted him back. Maybe they wanted him dead.

We met at the home of Sarah, a filmmaker who used to be a model, "until I got sick of the bullshit and gained twenty pounds." She wore a dark pinstripe suit. "When you look over the list of guys you've dated, Peri is the one guy that doesn't make any sense," she said. "You think, What was that about?"