Sex and the City

[Ed. note: this column was originally published on August 12th, 1996.]

The neighbors had sex last week. You know how it sounds, like cats being thrown into the sky. “Temptation hangs in the summer air,” The New York Times recently reported. Welcome to August.

I met my colleague Candace Bushnell by the Chanel accessories counter in Bergdorf Goodman at high noon the other day. Her Sex and the City columns have just been published in book form by Atlantic Monthly Press. Shopping is, after all, vertical sex.  read more »

[Ed. note: this article was originally published in the December 23-30, 1996 edition of The New York Observer.]

The sculptor Dane Peen returned to his SoHo loft at noon. He stumbled into the kitchen where Sonya, the Brazilian nanny, was cooking his 2-year-old son, Sting, a hard-boiled egg.

“Oh, Mister Peen,” Sonya said, as Dane sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands. “Everybody been looking for you. Mrs. Peen go to find you.”

“Where Mrs. Peen?” Dane asked.

“She went to some funeral.”

“Funeral. I’d like to go to funeral. My own.” He jumped up. “Oh, shit—get out of the way!” he said, rushing to bathroom. Sting started screaming.

Maria Kydd-Peen came in the door.

“Oh, Dane,” Maria said. Dane emerged, panting, no tie, his shirt soiled and unbuttoned. “Now are you going to tell me you weren’t doing coke?”

“None of your business,” Dane said.

“Fucking liar. I am so sick of this fucking lying. What else are you lying about, you fucking bastard?”

“Fuck-ing…” said little Sting.

“Forget it, Maria,” Dane said.

“You forget it,” Maria said. She slapped him across the face. “Get out. I want you out of my house.”

“Fine,” Dane said. “But just remember, it’s my fucking house, too.”

“And don’t come back,” Maria said. “You’re fucking up our kid.”

A Bloody Nose

In the king-size bed in the penthouse at the Morgans hotel, the actor Tyler Kydd rolled over, having just woken from a small nap. “Yoo-hooo….love cakes,” he called. “Where aaaare you?”

Evie came to the top of the stairs. She was wearing one of Tyler’s English custom-made shirts (which she planned to steal) and her high heels from the night before. “Yes, darling?” she said.

“Let’s have some fun.”

“We’ve just had lots of fun.”

“I want more fun. Bring me a bloody, will you?”
“A bloody nose?”

“No stupid chick wisecracks, O.K.? Get down here and make me happy.”

“Make yourself happy,” Evie said.

“Honey,” Tyler said, “just remember one thing: If you won’t rock me, somebody will.”

“Oh, Tyler.”

“I’m calling another girl. Toss me my book, will you?”
“Are you serious?” Evie said.

“On top of the TV.”

“You scumbag,” Evie said. But she handed the phone book to him.

Tyler yawned. “I’m horny, a horny old toad.” He grabbed Evie by the shirt and pulled her down on top of him.

“What kind of girl do you like?” Tyler asked. “Blonde, brunette, redhead, French, Spanish?”

“Stop kidding around," Evie said. She tried to kiss him on the mouth.

“Why not? I want a threesome,” Tyler said. He began pawing through the book and then started dialing. Evie sat back on her haunches. “But what if I don’t want a threesome?”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Tyler said. “All women want to sleep with other women. They just don’t admit it.”

“Excuse me,” Evie said.

Tyler put his hand over the receiver. “Where are you going?”

“Leaving.”

“Suit yourself. Hi sweetheart,” he said into the phone. “I’m baaaaaack.”

Ten minutes later, Evie was riding in a cab going home, flipping through the Post, when she saw an ad for Tyler’s new movie. It suddenly came back to her that Tyler really was a movie star, a movie star whom other women would kill to be with. She thought about returning to his hotel room and having the damn threesome, but she knew that he might not let her back in, and she couldn’t face the embarrassment. “I’ve lost him,” she thought. She began crying quietly, in spite of herself.

‘What If We Get Caught’

The Big Apple town car pulled up in front of a corrugated metal warehouse in Brooklyn, and TV journalist Nico Barone and magazine writer James Dieke got out of the car.

“What if we get caught?” James asked.

“So? They’ll arrest us. I’ve got a great lawyer. We’ll be out in 24,” Nico said.

“I don’t think my wife is going to like it if I end up in jail,” James said.

“Who gives a fuck about your wife?” Next Page >

[Ed. note: this article was originally published on December 2, 1996.]

Tyler Kydd enters the Ziegfeld movie theater three minutes before his new film, Gagged, begins. The lights are still on, but everybody is seated, and, as usual, the audience turns to stare at him as he follows his manager and the movie studio publicist down the aisle to his seats. Tyler sits on the aisle, next to the publicist, whom he knows he will not remember if he meets her in a different context. She puts her elbow on the armrest and leans toward him, turning her head in profile, as if to shield him from the audience.

“People magazine is here,” she says.

“Mmmm,” he says. “What about the critic from The New Yorker?” He says this knowing that movie critics do not usually attend premiers, knowing that the movie critic from The New Yorker has already seen the film two weeks or even a month earlier.  read more » Next Page >

[Ed. note: this article was originally published on November 25th, 1996]

Tyler Kidd is in town and James Dieke is afraid. And excited.

To hear his wife, Winnie, tell it, James and the Famous Movie Star are old friends. “Tyler Kidd? Don’t even ask,” Winnie will say if somebody does ask (and they do, since Winnie makes sure of it by dropping Tyler Kydd’s name at every opportune moment). “Tyler and James used to be bartenders together. On Martha’s Vineyard. When they were in college. A million years ago.” And then: “He’s just a regular guy, you know.” Pause. “He was best man at our wedding.”

James has always suspected that Winnie considers his friendship with Tyler an asset. Like owning a house in the country. (Which they do, even though, as two earnest journalists, they both know they can’t really afford it—each is secretly hoping the other hits a book deal. Soon.)

The last time James spoke with Tyler (three months ago, Tyler calling from his trailer on location in Mississippi), Tyler said, “I wish hookers were girls you knew. You know, like regular girls who were your friends, but they were hookers, too. So whenever you wanted to have sex with them, you could pay them, and you wouldn’t have to get involved.”

James hadn’t known what to say. That he’d never been with a hooker? That he found prostitution repugnant for moral and feminist reasons?

“Dude?” Tyler said.

“But if you’re friends with them, aren’t you already involved?” James said. “In some manner?”

“I have to go. I’m wanted in makeup,” Tyler had said, like the whole thing was still a big joke to him and always would be.

“Tyler’s in town,” James says now, calling Winnie from his home-office, and being careful to use the fax line because he’s been audited by the I.R.S. three times.

“We should fix him up with someone,” Winnie says.

“I don’t think Tyler Kydd needs to be fixed up,” James says.

“With a normal girl,” Winnie says. “A woman in her 30’s with a real job.”

“I don’t think Tyler Kydd wants to go out with a normal girl.”

“James,” Winnie says, “Tyler is always asking me to fix him up with someone.”

“He’s just says that to make you feel good,” James says.

“Oh. So, in other words, all he really wants to do is fuck dumb, 20-year-old models for the rest of his life.”

“Probably.”

“Even when he’s 60?”

“Definitely when he’s 60.”

“He’s always telling me he wants to find the right girl and get married.”

“That’s only because he’s never been married,” James says.

There’s a pause. James hits a few keys on his computer.

“Thank you, James,” Winnie says. “I’ve been waiting for a comment like that, and you just delivered.”

“Can I get off the phone now?” James asks. He types in the word, “Chimpanzees.”

“No, you may not,” Winnie says.

“I’ve got to do an interview. With a man in customs. About the chimp story.”

“Have you ever noticed how every time Tyler Kydd comes into town, you start acting like an asshole”

“No,” James says.

“A big, fucking asshole.”

“Sorry,” James says.

“I won’t tolerate it, James. I will not tolerate what happened last time.”

“What happened last time?” James says.

Silence.

“So who are you going to fix Tyler up with?” James says. “What about your sister Evie?”

“Evie’s involved,” Winnie says.

“With who?”

“Who isn’t involved with Evie?” Winnie says.

Me, James thinks. Next Page >

There was an afternoon in September when Carrie was going someplace or another, and there was too much traffic and she got out of the cab and walked down the middle of Madison Avenue in an expensive pantsuit. Let’s face it, she thought: You own this town.

“Listen, sweetie,” Mr. Big had said, several weeks earlier, “people don’t like you as much as you’d probably like to think they do.”

“Yeah? So what?” She got a beer out of the refrigerator.

“They think you have an agenda. But they don’t know what it is.”

“Is that supposed to be my problem?”

“That’s exactly what I’m talking about.”

“Who are these ‘people,’ anyway?”

“I’m just trying to give you some advice,” he said. “I’m just trying to help you. You’re too aggressive.”

Carrie felt herself slipping into that bad place again in her head. For the umpteenth time in months.  read more » Next Page >

Mr. Big had yet to say, “I want to be with someone ‘normal.’ I want to have a normal life.” Because at that point, on the surface, everything seemed status quo. Everything except the weather.  read more » Next Page >

For the past few weeks, Winnie has been spending a lot of time reminding herself of everything she’s achieved. Something is wrong.  read more » Next Page >

This is a story about two very important people, with two very important jobs, who are married to each other and have exactly one child.  read more » Next Page >

“I’m Janey Wilcox, the model, and I’m spending the weekend with Zack Manners, the English billionaire record producer. So fuck you. All of you.”  read more » Next Page >

"I've got to find a man for the summer," Janey had been complaining to her friend, Alison, when a voice from one of the stalls shouted out, “Harold Vane!”  read more » Next Page >

Model seeks place, puts up with boob-squeezing enthusiast.  read more » Next Page >

Suzannah was a 40-year-old sculptress who wore dramatic make-up and large pieces of jewelry. She had never seen herself in a traditional marriage. “Separate bedrooms?” she asked.  read more » Next Page >

There are things worse than being 35, single and female in New York. Like: being 25, single and female in New York.  read more » Next Page >

"But then you realize that you’d have to share a bed with him, watch him brush his teeth, that stuff ...”  read more » Next Page >

Christmas season in New York. The parties. The star on 57th Street. The tree. Most of the time, it’s never the way it should be. But once in a while, something happens and it works.  read more » Next Page >

There’s something rotten in New York society, and it’s the character formerly known as the “eligible” bachelor.  read more » Next Page >

Infant rubdowns, nanny Cameras, and a little man you can depend on.  read more » Next Page >

It is time. Time to stop complaining about no good men. Time to stop calling your machine every half-hour to see if a man has called. Yes, it is finally time to marry a man in Manhattan.  read more » Next Page >

In the heat, you can’t trust anyone, especially yourself.  read more » Next Page >

Four women met at an Upper East Side restaurant to discuss what it was like to be an extremely beautiful young woman in New York City.  read more » Next Page >

Sex in the Hamptons is a lot like sex in Manhattan—except it’s not. Odd couplings and brief flings, which in the city might raise an eyebrow, are somehow forgiven out on the East End.  read more » Next Page >

Bad things can happen to city women when they come back from visiting their newly-married-with-children friends in the suburbs.  read more » Next Page >

The pilgrimage to the newly suburbanized friend is one that most Manhattan women have made, and few truly enjoyed. In fact, most come back to the city in an emotional state somewhere between giddy and destroyed.  read more » Next Page >

A few weeks back, I had an encounter with a Bicycle Boy.

It happened at a book party that was held in a great marble hall on a tree-lined street. While I was surreptitiously stuffing my face with smoked salmon, a writer friend, a guy, rushed up and said, “I’ve just been talking to the most interesting man.”

“Oh yeah? Who?” I asked, glancing around the room with suspicion.  read more » Next Page >

New York's last seduction.  read more » Next Page >

The first time you meet Michael, at Bowery Bar with Clifford at his side, you want to hate him.  read more » Next Page >

Seven Men Meet Two Women …  read more » Next Page >

Love in Manhattan? I don’t think so …  read more » Next Page >

Eventually, it always comes up. The Inevitable. “Errrrrr,” he begins.  read more » Next Page >

When it comes to finding a marriage partner, New York has its own particularly cruel mating rituals, as complicated and sophisticated as an Edith Wharton novel.  read more » Next Page >

Seven women gathered in Manhattan, over wine, cheese and cigarettes, to animatedly discuss the one thing they had in common: a man.  read more » Next Page >

The original "Sex and the City" column, available for the first time on the Web.  read more » Next Page >