Is There Still Sex in the City? Read online

  Like me, most were in okay shape. Meaning they were healthy enough to bike a few miles but not obsessed enough to hold the French fries later. Many were couples who, I assumed, had decided to get more exercise and were doing it together. In any case, they looked happy. Actually, that’s kind of a lie. Sometimes either one or the other looked annoyed, like they couldn’t believe their spouse had convinced them to do this and it had better be good for the marriage. But they were friendly. As I passed by, we’d exchange a little nod or wave in the style of old-fashioned boat etiquette.

  Then there were the hard chargers. Also middle-aged men and women, they wore the latest gear and were mounted on road bikes with skinny tires and aerodynamic frames. They seemed to belong to some kind of club—a “super middle” one, as I would later discover—and they only acknowledged those who were just like them. As far as they were concerned, everyone else was just roadkill.

  Finally, there were the friend pods. Mixed groups of men and women out for some bonding time. I could imagine the conversation that led to this event:

  “Hey, let’s get together.”

  “I’d love to, but I’m trying not to drink or eat too much.”

  “Me neither. Hmm, I’ve got an idea. Let’s go for a bike ride.”

  “Yay!”

  Tangled Up in a Pod

  The friend pods were everywhere. It wasn’t long before I was surrounded by one of them.

  The problem with the pods is that everyone rides at slightly different speeds. Usually at speeds that are too fast to outbike and too slow to stay behind. The result is that everyone inadvertently ends up riding next to each other at close enough to the same speed to have to make conversation.

  This isn’t usually difficult or unpleasant. All you have to do is say something like “nice day for a ride” and kind of smile and nod and give a small finger waggle and eventually someone in the pod takes the lead and like ducklings the rest follow.

  In this particular pod of four, that didn’t happen. The woman and one of the men went ahead, but two men lingered behind. Sometimes this happens due to oncoming traffic that makes passing ill-advised.

  The two men looked over at me, so I looked over at them. One was fairly nondescript. But the other one had a mustache. A gray-haired mustache that was paired with the jolly, largely line-free skin of a man who eats well and knows how to have a good time.

  “Like your bike,” he said with a smile.

  “Thanks,” I said, hoping they’d pass. They were trying to ride three across, which just isn’t safe. I hate that. If a car hit one of us we could all topple like dominos.

  “What kind of bike is it?” he said.

  Really? Doesn’t he know how dangerous it is to try to have a conversation between bikes when cars are roaring past at forty miles per hour? “It’s a mountain bike,” I said between gritted teeth.

  And then, thank god, he nodded and he and his friend passed.

  The next stop was the ferry. It took cars and bikers across the bay to an island that was known as a mecca for riding. The roads were picturesque and there wasn’t a lot of traffic.

  When I arrived at the dock, the ferry was just coming in. The friend pod was clustered by the side while Tilda Tia was right up at the edge of the dock as if angling to get on first. Which meant I had to pass the pod people to get to her.

  “Headed to Shelter Island?” asked the mustachioed guy, as if Shelter Island weren’t the only stop on the ferry.

  I nodded.

  “We’re biking to the Ram’s Head Inn for lunch. You should join.”

  “Thank you,” I said, pleased. So far this bike-riding adventure was proving to be a good way to meet people.

  I gestured at Tilda Tia and told him I was with someone.

  He gave her the once-over, decided she was okay, and suggested that she come too.

  “Success,” I hissed as I wheeled my bike up to Tilda Tia. I pointed out the pod and told her they’d asked if we wanted to have lunch with them.

  “No,” she said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because they remind me of my first husband and his friends. And that’s not what I’m looking for.”

  And to prove it, she wheeled her bike to the bow of the boat, putting as much distance between her and the pod people as possible.

  Indeed, Tilda Tia had an entirely different type of guy in mind as I would discover ten miles later.

  We were pedaling around a beautifully landscaped peninsula dotted with large historic houses when she suddenly pulled up short.

  “There it is,” she said, gesturing at a Victorian mansion. “My fantasy house. The house I’d live in if I had all the money in the world.”

  As we gazed at the house, our eye was drawn to a guy who came out of the house next door. He was dressed in a T-shirt and running shorts. He was perfectly muscled, with dark hair and an action-figure face. He was, maybe, thirty?

  “Oh my god!” Tilda Tia said, as the guy reached the end of the driveway and began running. “It’s the hot guy.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “Didn’t I tell you about him? I spotted him two days ago by the harbor. He’s the most beautiful man in the world.” And she took off after him.

  Please don’t do this. Please don’t make me do this, I prayed, as I pedaled hard to keep up with her. And because of this foolishness, it happened: I sustained an injury.

  The streets in this very tony enclave were riddled with deterrents: speed bumps, small triangular obstacles, and randomly placed metal posts. As I was trying to avoid one of the posts, I hit a speed bump too hard and my feet flew off the pedals but not before one of them spun around and whacked me in the shin.

  “Ow,” I said.

  I got off my bike. I was going to have a black and blue mark, and it hurt. At some point in the near future it would hopefully stop hurting, but in the meantime I still had to ride. At least far enough to find Tilda Tia.

  She had disappeared over a small rise. I called her on her phone.

  She answered immediately thanks to her Bluetooth headphones. “Where are you?” she said.

  “I hit a speed bump.”

  “Are you okay? Do you want me to come back for you?”

  No. I didn’t. It wasn’t that bad.

  I caught up with her at the crossroads and showed her my leg.

  I clearly didn’t need an ambulance. On the other hand, we both decided that ice might be a good idea.

  We headed to a popular beachside restaurant that was only, according to Tilda Tia’s biking app, three miles away.

  Fifteen minutes later, sweating and exhausted, we arrived. Once considered a hot spot, the restaurant was now filled with thirty- and fortysomething parents, complete with carloads of kids.

  We sat down at a table and fanned our faces with the menu. “I can’t understand why I’m so sweaty,” Tilda Tia complained.

  “I can,” I said. I checked my phone. “It’s only . . . eighty-nine degrees and seventy percent humidity.”

  This made us laugh. What the hell were we doing, two sweaty middle-aged women riding around in ninety-degree weather thinking we were going to meet men?

  But no matter. It was nice in the restaurant with its multicolored rattan chairs and overhead fans. Outside the children played on the beach while the tourists pushed each other off a party boat anchored in the bay.

  We ordered the house special, the Froze—rosé, fresh strawberries, and a splash of vodka whipped into a frozen confection. We ate French fries dipped in mayonnaise. Then, because it was that kind of day, we called an Uber.

  chapter three

  The Tinder Experiment

  A few days later, having come up empty-handed during the bicycle-boy challenge, I was back in my apartment in the city when an email came in. A person named Emma wanted me to write a piece of experimental jo
urnalism about the dating app Tinder.

  It was the word “experimental” that caught my attention. What did that mean I wondered.

  I saw that Emma had included her telephone number. This meant the piece was important, because the phone was only supposed to be used for special occasions.

  After a few email exchanges, we arranged a time to talk.

  “Hello?” Emma the editor said. She explained that she was twenty-six and lived most of her life online. She confessed she wasn’t very good at irl—in real life—and that the phone was very irl.

  I asked what she meant by the word “experimental.”

  Emma lowered her voice. “I want you to tell us the truth about Tinder.”

  The truth? Was that the experimental part?

  If so, the “truth” was that Emma worked for a magazine that celebrated sex and dating and mating and being a woman. And part of being a woman is being caught up in the industrial-romance complex where it’s encouraged to believe in true love and romance and getting married and having babies and a far-off happy ending. This fantasy is sold in a million different ways, from reality TV to lingerie to nose-hair clippers. We buy romance and goddamn if it doesn’t make us feel better.

  Which meant chances were Emma wanted the same old, same old—a story about how online dating had its ups and downs but was mediated by a happy ending. Meaning someone gets married.

  On the other hand, even I’d heard the rap about this notorious Tinder app, which wasn’t even supposed to be for dating but for “hookups” only—a vague term that could indicate anything from lying next to each other on the bed watching Netflix to having down-and-dirty sex in a bathroom stall. It all sounded unpleasant: the guys were horrible, they sent dick pics, they never looked like their photos, they lied about everything, they’d hook up and never text you again. I’d been told the women were only judged on their looks and that guys would meet up with a woman and spend the whole time on their phones looking for other hookups. On and on it went, ending with: the guys only want blow jobs.

  I don’t think so.

  “Please?” Emma begged.

  “But why?” I said.

  “Because,” she lowered her voice. “I have friends . . . and Tinder is ruining their lives. And you’ve got to help them.”

  I wasn’t sure I could. It had been a very long time since I’d done a piece of “journalism.” But I still remembered one rule: Go in with an open mind. Don’t decide what the story is before you write it.

  “But what if Tinder turns out to be good? What if I like it?” I asked.

  Emma emitted a short, harsh laugh and hung up.

  I downloaded the Tinder app and clicked on the icon.

  It’s All About Money!

  The first thing I realized is that while Tinder is ostensibly about sex, it’s actually about money. In order to use Tinder, I immediately got snookered into agreeing to pay ninety-nine dollars a year for the rest of my life. That made me irritated. It meant when this damn Tinder experiment was over, I’d have to figure out a way to unsubscribe to Tinder, lest they keep charging me.

  And then there was the Facebook link. I don’t keep up with Facebook so by default it logged on to some ancient account and suddenly one of my photos appeared. Taken about ten years ago, of course. And there was my mini profile, which contained my first name and, yes, my age.

  Already this was going wrong. Tinder is supposed to be a hookup app. Who wants to hook up with a fiftysomething-year-old?

  Exactly two men, it seemed. Both of whom were smokers in their sixties.

  This was not going to work. Being an old coot myself, I really didn’t want to hook up with another old coot. What was new about that?

  I examined my profile more closely and discovered that Tinder had automatically adjusted the settings for the age range of men it guessed I would be interested in. Meaning men aged fifty-five to seventy.

  This made me angry as well. It was sexist for Tinder to assume that a middle-aged woman would only want to date what the app considered age-appropriate men.

  To get even with Tinder, I reset my age range from twenty-two to thirty-eight.

  Suddenly, everything changed. This age group was where the action was. Especially in the twenty-two to twenty-eight category.

  I called up Kitty. “I can’t even get through this swiping thing. Are you supposed to attract all these guys? Who knew so many young guys were interested in hooking up with women old enough to be their mother?”

  And what the hell was I supposed to do next?

  Naturally, no one my age had any damn clue. They knew no more than I did, except what I’d already heard: Tinder was a hookup app where women met guys, gave them blow jobs, and never saw them again.

  The photographs of these prospective oral sex recipients were on playing cards, apparently underscoring the idea that this was nothing more than a game designed to keep users on the app for as long as possible.

  I began hitting the Like button. Every time I did, some gimcrackery came up on top of my screen informing me that I had “matched.” Yay. This was actually fun. It was even exciting. I was matching, whatever that meant.

  A few seconds later, I understood. I could get messages.

  I started reading them:

  Do you have anything to do with “Sex and the City”?

  Are you the Candace Bushnell?

  What could I say? Yes.

  Bing, I got back a reply:

  You’re too good for this app.

  This was heartening. These men didn’t know me, but they already had an idea about me. I was too good for this app. Yes. Yes, I was.

  But this also made me nervous. If this app was so bad, why was everyone on it? And why were even the men who were on it saying it was bad? Shouldn’t the men be saying it was good in order to get more action on it?

  Perhaps these men on Tinder weren’t terribly intelligent?

  I got a very long message from a guy named Jude. It was all about how we had some Facebook friend Bobby in common and what a jerk the guy was and how he had a terrible hangover and it ended with something like: Trying to date on an app when people know who you are must sux.

  Why yes, Jude, I thought. It potentially does sux. How considerate of you to consider my situation.

  I wrote back to him: Which Bobby?

  I looked at Jude’s picture again. The one that had attracted me featured a shaggy, dark-haired guy with a beard and round glasses and a humorous, intelligent smile, as if he were somehow in on the joke that he looked like a very cute version of Snoopy. I scrolled quickly through the rest of his photos, including one of him playing drums. I saw he lived in Brooklyn and was in a band and was therefore, I assumed, out of my league.

  But what did I know?

  Champagne Dreams

  And so, on a Wednesday night in my apartment, Emma and I organized a girls’ roundup of Tinderellas—young women who were regularly on Tinder. The group, including Emma, ranged in age from twenty-two (the youngs) to thirty-three (the millennials).

  Like most of the young women I meet, they were impressive. They were independent thinkers with a unique sense of style. Their careers were important to them and appeared to be a source of pleasure.

  I poured champagne then passed around my phone. They immediately began analyzing the men who had matched with me.

  “Oooh. Look at this guy. Emerson College. He’s cute,” cooed Hannah.

  “I don’t think I should go out with a college student,” I said. “What about this guy who said I was too good for the app?”

  A ruse, Elisa explained. “Guys always say you’re too pretty or too good for Tinder. It’s a line they use.”

  And as for Jude?

  Everyone rolled their eyes. Apparently, his messages were too long. “On Tinder, guys either don’t respond or they write you a novel.”
<
br />   “But if they’re communicating, that’s good, right?” I asked.

  Apparently not, because when they do communicate: “All they talk about is themselves.”

  “Do you really think there’s a guy out there who doesn’t talk about himself or isn’t obsessed with himself?” I asked.

  A resounding no.

  Marion had a question: “How do we as women navigate men’s self-absorption? Or do we just have to accept it as fact and be happy if a guy pretends to pay attention to you for two seconds?”

  Emma spoke up. She was the only one who not only had a relationship but was actually married. Emma explained it this way: “I feel like my husband is not at all self-absorbed, while I am. I only talk about myself and then sometimes I’ll ask him how his day was. So it balances out. You have to be just as self-absorbed because it’s every man for himself in a relationship. That way you can both care mostly about yourselves and then a little bit about the other person.”

  I laughed. “If that quote appeared ten years ago, people would say, ‘These selfish bitches, that’s why they’re not with a man.’”

  “But she is with a man,” Elisa pointed out.

  Aha, I thought. Here was a very good sign that some things had changed for the better. Women could speak their minds freely and men would still be happy to match with them.

  But had Emma met her husband on Tinder?

  No, she had not. And as more champagne was poured, everyone began dissing Tinder.

  “Finding a guy on Tinder is about as much fun as trying to find an apartment,” Gena said. “It’s boring.”

  “All the guys on it in their twenties take prescription drugs and have been diagnosed by a shrink.”

  “They’re like: ‘The reason I can’t text you back is because of ADD.’”

  “Texting chemistry is huge because it’s so rare,” Corina said. “Texting with someone who’s good at texting is hot. I love the slow burn.”

  “That would annoy the shit out of me,” Gena interjected. “Someone matches with me and I say when can you meet in person? I’m not going to text forever. I think it’s a young person thing.”