Candace Bushnell: SEX and the CITY

Six months ago, Peri came back for a visit and took Sarah out to dinner. "He took my hand in his," she said, "and

he was saying to his friend, 'She's the only woman I ever loved. For old time's sake, I went back to his apartment for a drink, and he asked me to marry him so seriously, I couldn't believe it. I thought he was lying. So I decided to torture him.

"He told me, T don't want you to see any other men, and I won't see any other women.

"I said, 'Okay, thinking, How's that going to work? He lives in Europe and I live in New York. But the next morning, he called me up and said, 'You realize you're my girlfriend now.

"I said, 'Okay, Peri, that's cool. "

He went back to Europe, and, Sarah said, she forgot about the whole thing. One morning, she was in bed with her new boyfriend when the phone rang. It was Peri. While Sarah was talking to him, her boyfriend said, "Do you want some coffee?" Peri went nuts.

"Who's there?" he said.

"A friend," Sarah said.

"At ten in the morning? You're sleeping with another guy? We're getting married and you're sleeping with another guy?" He hung up, but a week later he called back.

"Are you ready?" he asked.

"For what?" Sarah said.

"We're getting married, aren't we? You're not still seeing someone, are you?"

"Listen, Peri, I don't see a ring on my finger," Sarah said. "Why don't you send a messenger over to Harry Winston's to pick something up, and then

we'll talk."

Peri never called Harry Winston's, and he didn't call Sarah again for months. She said she sort of missed him. "I adore him," she said. "I feel compassion for him because he's totally fucked up."

It was getting dark outside, but nobody wanted to leave. They all wanted to stay, transfixed by the idea of a man like Tom Peri, but not Tom Peri.

Lunch the other day. Vicious gossip with a man I'd just met. We were discussing mutual friends, a couple. He knew the husband, I knew the wife. I'd never met the husband, and I hadn't seen the wife in years (except to run into her occasionally on the street), but as usual, I knew eveiything about the situation.

"It's going to end badly," I said. "He was naive. A country mouse. He came in from Boston and he didn't know anything about her and she jumped at the opportunity. She'd already gone through so many guys in New York and she had a reputation. No guy in New York would have married her."

I attacked my fried chicken, warming up to the subject. "Women in New York know. They know when they have to get married, and that's when they do it. Maybe they've slept with too many guys, or they know nothing's ever going to really happen with their career, or maybe they really do want kids. Until then, they put it off for as long as they can. Then they have that moment, and if they don't take it. . " I shrugged. "That's it. Chances are, they'll never get married."

The other guy at the table, a corporate, doting-dad type who lives in Westchester, was looking at us in horror. "But what about love?" he asked. I looked at him pityingly. "I don't think so."

When it comes to finding a marriage partner, New York has its own particularly cruel mating rituals, as complicated and sophisticated as those in

an Edith Wharton novel. Everyone knows the rules—but no one wants to talk about them. The result is that New York has bred a particular type of single woman—smart, attractive, successful, and. . never married. She is in her late thirties or early forties, and, if empirical knowledge is good for anything, she probably never will get married.

This is not about statistics. Or exceptions. We all know about the successful playwright who married the beautiful fashion designer a couple of years older than he is. But when you're beautiful and successful and rich and "know everyone," the normal rules don't apply.

What if, on the other hand, you're forty and pretty and you're a television producer or have your own PR company, but you still live in a studio and sleep on a foldout couch— the nineties equivalent of Mary Tyler Moore? Except, unlike Mary Tyler Moore, you've actually gone to bed with all those guys instead of demurely kicking them out at 12:02 a.m.? What happens to those women?

There are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of women like this in the city. We all know lots of them, and we all agree they're great. They travel, they pay taxes, they'll spend four hundred dollars on a pair of Manolo Blahnik strappy sandals.

"There is nothing wrong with these women," said Jerry, thirty-nine, a corporate lawyer who happened to marry one of these smart women, three years older than he is. "They're not crazy or neurotic. They're not Fatal Attraction." Jerry paused. "Why do I know so many great women who aren't married, and no great guys? Let's face it, the unmarried guys in New York suck."

"Here's the deal," Jerry said. "There's a window of opportunity for women to get married in New York. Somewhere between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-five. Or maybe thirty-six." We agreed that if a woman's been married once, she can always get married again; there's something about knowing how to close the deal.

"But all of a sudden, when women get to be thirty-seven or thirty-eight, there's all this. . stuff," he said. "Baggage. They've been around too long. Their history works against them. If I were single and I found out that a woman had gone out with Mort Zuckerman or 'Marvin' (a publisher)—the M&Ms—forget it. Who wants to be twentieth on that line? And then if they pull any of those other stunts, like children out of wedlock or rehab stays— that's a problem."

Jerry told a story: Last summer, he was at a small dinner in the Hamptons. The guests were in TV and movies. He and his wife were trying to fix up a forty-year-old former model with a guy who had just gotten divorced. The two were talking, and suddenly something came up about Mort Zuckerman, and then Marvin, and suddenly Jerry and his wife were watching the guy turn off.

"There's a list of toxic bachelors in New York," said Jerry, "and they're deadly."

Later in the day, I relay the story to Anna, who's thirty-six, and who has a habit of disagreeing with everything men say. All guys want to sleep with her, and she's constantly chewing them out for being shallow. She's dated the M&Ms and she knows Jerry. When I tell her the story, she screams. "Jerry is just jealous. He'd like to be like those guys, except he doesn't have the money or the power to pull it off. Scratch the surface and every guy in New York wants to be Mort Zuckerman."

George, thirty-seven, an investment banker, is another guy who sees the toxic bachelors as a problem. "These guys—the

plastic surgeon, that Times editor, the crazy guy who owns those fertility clinics—they all take out the same pool of women and it never goes anywhere," he said. "Yeah, if I met a woman who had gone out with all those guys, I wouldn't like it."

"If you're Diane Sawyer, you'll always be able to get married," said George. "But even women who are A's and A-'s can miss out. The problem is, in New York, people self-select down to smaller and smaller groups. You're dealing with a crowd of people who are enormously privileged, and their standards are incredibly high.

"And then there are all your friends. Look atyow," George said. "There's nothing wrong with any of the guys you've gone out with, but we always give you shit about them."

That was true. All of my boyfriends have been wonderful in their own way, but my friends have found fault with every one of them, mercilessly chewing me out for putting up with any of their perceived, but in my mind excusable, flaws. Now, I was finally alone, and all my friends were happy.