Candace Bushnell - SEX and the CITY

Thursday night at Barolo. Mark Baker, the restaurateur and promoter, is throwing one of his special parties. Here's how it works: The promoters have a relationship with the agencies. The agencies know the promoters are "safe"—i.e., they're going to take care of their girls, entertain them. In turn, the promoters need the modelizers to take the girls out. The promoters don't always have the money to take the girls out to dinner. The modelizers do. Someone's got to feed them. The modelizer meets someone like Mr. Roque. Mr. Roque wants girls. The modelizers want girls and they also want to hang out with Mr. Roque. Everyone is happy.

Outside, on this Thursday night, there's pandemonium on the sidewalk. People pushing, trying to get the attention of a tall, mean-looking guy who could be part oriental, part Italian. Inside, the place is jammed. Everyone is dancing, everyone is tall and beautiful.

You talk to a girl with a fake European accent. Then a girl from Tennessee who just returned from a trip back home. "I was wearing bellbottoms and platform shoes, and my old boyfriend said, 'Carol Anne, what the hell are you wearing? And I said, 'Get with it, honey. This is New York. "

Jack slides by and starts talking.

"Even if they're dumb, models are very manipulative. You can split them into three types. One: The new girls in town. They're usually really young— sixteen, seventeen. They go out a lot. They might not work that much, they want something to do, they need to meet people, like photographers. Two: The girls who work a lot. They're a little older, twenty-one and up, they've been in the business for five years. They ……

And three: The supermodels. They're looking for a big-time guy who can do something for them. They're all obsessed with money, maybe because their careers are insecure. They won't even look at a guy who has less than twenty or thirty mil. Plus, they have the 'big girl' complex: They won't hang out with any girl who's not a top model, and they ignore other models or bitch about them."

You go down to the bathroom with Jack and hang out in the men's room. "By the time they get to be twenty-one, these girls have tons of baggage," says Jack. "They have a history: Children. Guys they've slept with. Guys you don't like. Most of them come from broken homes or fucked-up backgrounds. They're beautiful, but in the end, they don't do anything for you. They're young. They're uneducated. They have no values, you know? I prefer the older ones. You have to find one without baggage, and I'm on the search."

"The trick is to get one big girl—like a Hunter Reno or a Janna Rhodes," says George. "These are girls who have done covers in Europe. If you get one, you can get them all. At a nightclub, you pay attention to the older girls. They always want to go home early because they have to get up and work. You walk them out to a cab, being a gentleman, then you go back in and attack the young ones,"

"These girls just want to be comfortable," says Mr. Felske. "They're so young. They're just finding their way in a grownup world. They're not fully developed, and they meet these guys who know all the tricks. How hard can it be?"

Back in the loft, Barkley opens a bottle of Coke and sits on a stool in the middle of the room. "You think, Who's prettier than a model. But they're not so smart, they're flakey and fucked up, they're a lot looser than you think. It's way easier to screw a model than a regular girl. That's what they do all the time. It's the way regular people are when they're

on vacation. They're away, so they do things they wouldn't normally do. But these girls are away all the time because they travel from place to place. So that's what they're like all the time."

Barkley takes a sip from his Coke and scratches his stomach. It's three in the afternoon, and he just woke up an hour ago. "These girls are nomads," he says. "They have a guy in every city. They call me when they're in New York, and I always imagine that they call someone else when they're in Paris or Rome or Milan. We pretend that we're going out when they're in town. We hold hands and see each other every day. A lot of girls want that. But then they're gone." Barkley yawns. "I don't know. There are so many beautiful girls around that after a while you start looking for someone who can make you laugh."

"It's amazing sometimes what you'll do to be with these girls," George says. "I went to church with one girl and her daughter. I've started to hang out with older girls almost exclusively. I've got to retire soon. They keep me from getting work done. They make me fuck up my life." George shrugged and glanced out the window of his 34th-floor office at the view of midtown Manhattan. "Look at me," he says. "I'm an old man at twenty-nine."

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 lover. 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 friend Carrie, 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.

"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 relieved when 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