Is There Still Sex in the City? Read online

  “Like reaction gifs,” Elisa said.

  “Oh no. I like reaction gifs,” said Corina, who was twenty-two.

  “Gifs are a generational thing,” Emma explained. “It’s the same as when your grandmother doesn’t know what an emoji is. I’m like: I don’t understand a reaction gif.”

  But all this must lead to something good at the end, yes? Like a date?

  “Dates?” Marion scoffed.

  “I’ve had men take me to the ATM. That’s an ‘outing’ to me,” Corina said. “I’ll tag along while they’re running errands. I’ll tag along while they’re picking up dry cleaning.”

  “A guy once messaged me to meet him at a restaurant at eight p.m. I was excited. I thought, Here’s a guy who actually can make a plan. But it turned out he only wanted to meet at the restaurant to pee, and then we went to a Starbucks where we didn’t even get a coffee. And then we got kicked out,” Hannah said.

  Gena rolled her eyes. “The guy was probably crashing at his mom’s house.”

  Being one of the olds, I had to ask the inevitable question: If dating is work and the guys are no good, why not try to meet people the old-fashioned way? In a bar?

  Can We Talk?

  “The problem with going to a bar is that you’re not necessarily going to meet someone. I went to bars for years and I only met two guys that I’ve gone home with and slept with. Okay, maybe four,” Gena said.

  On the other hand, trying to find someone on a dating app has plenty of hurdles as well, especially when it comes to chemistry irl.

  “There are so many guys I see online that I think: No, not cute enough, I’m not attracted, but if I met them in real life I would be attracted,” Hannah said. “If you meet someone in real life you have a sense of their humanity. And online you don’t have that.”

  The atmosphere suddenly became strangely tense, as if someone had said something politically incorrect.

  There was a pause. “So you would prefer to meet people irl? If you could, that’s how you would meet everybody?” Emma asked, as if such a thing were not possible.

  “It’s not that I feel online is bad,” Hannah insisted. “It’s just that the lack of context usually leads to disappointment. You can look at six good pictures of a boy and have no idea if you’ll have any chemistry in person.”

  Or feelings.

  “If you go into Tinder thinking, I just want to have sex, then you’re fine. You feel like you’re in control. But the second you have feelings it’s a free-for-all,” Corina said.

  “‘Catch feelings,’ as the teens say,” Emma added. “If you catch feelings for someone, you’re done. It’s the generation below us. It’s getting worse for them.”

  “But I like having sex with someone and having feelings,” Marion said.

  “And if they have feelings for you, too, that’s the best sex,” Hannah said.

  “Like, ‘in love’ kind of feelings?” I asked.

  Nope. “We’re talking about just a baseline level of caring about someone. Like I don’t need you to meet my parents, I don’t need you to be my emergency contact, just care a little bit,” Corina said.

  “Being nice is a winning quality in guys now. If you’re just not a psycho-killer you’re like the coolest,” Emma said.

  “Nice is also open and honest, but not ‘I’m all about radical transparency.’ If you can communicate and you’re a six out of ten, I will definitely have sex with you,” Hannah said.

  “It doesn’t take much. Just be a basic human being,” Marion said.

  Hannah turned to me and asked wistfully, “What were dates like when you were young?”

  A Walk in the Park

  Compared to what I’d been hearing for the past twenty minutes, dating thirty years ago was actually fun. Should I tell them about the helicopter rides? Or the long, romantic dinners at the Ritz in Paris? The yachts? The gondolas in Venice?

  I looked around the room and felt queasy. Better keep it simple, I thought, pouring myself another glass of champagne.

  “Well,” I began cautiously. “Usually you’d meet a guy and you’d exchange numbers. And then you’d go your separate ways and a couple of days later he’d call you on your landline. You’d chat for a bit. It was really great if the guy was funny. And then he’d ask if you wanted to go out. And sometimes, if that first conversation was really good you’d end up talking for another hour. So by the time the actual date came around, you were pretty excited to see the guy. And the guy was excited to see you too—”

  “But what did you do on the date?” Marion interrupted.

  I took another swig of champagne. “You’d go to dinner. And you’d talk. You’d discuss things. And then after dinner, if it was a nice night or if it was snowing, you might go for a walk in the park.”

  “Oh my god,” Emma gasped.

  I was embarrassed. “I know,” I groaned. “It’s so corny.”

  “I don’t think it’s corny at all,” Corina said. “To me, it sounds so appealing.”

  I laughed, wondering if I was being played. Was this nostalgia for the days of pre-app dating real?

  Emma looked sternly around the room. “Everyone in our generation finds that kind of romance compelling, but at the same time it’s just not realistic.”

  “I still like the idea of going for a walk with a guy, though,” Corina said hopefully.

  Hannah sighed. “I did that once and it stood out to me. As in, look: I met a boy and we went for a walk together in the park. It’s the most romantic thing that’s ever happened to me, ever.”

  Ten minutes later, I closed the door. Emma was right I thought, as I picked up the empty glasses. Tinder was bad. Just talking about it was depressing.

  The next day, I braced myself as I clicked on my profile. And there they were: Those magical pink waves. Emanating from my face like I was a powerful princess in a Disney movie. I’d forgotten how comforting those waves were. And bingo! They worked! In two seconds I’d snared a man. A hot guy with muscles named Dave.

  I liked him.

  Keep playing? Tinder asked.

  Damn straight.

  It was like being in Vegas.

  False Advertising

  And then I couldn’t stop playing. And talking about it.

  I said, “No matter what everyone says, the truth about Tinder is that I’ve never had so many guys interested in me. In ages. And saying nice things. Like, ‘You’ve got lovely eyes.’”

  “So what if he’s lying?” I’d continue. “No guy has said anything that nice to me in years.”

  And the women around me would agree, especially if they’d been married and were getting, or had just gotten, sectionorced.

  They would gaze longingly at my Tinder matches. And then, with a sigh, they’d go back to emailing their bitter ex-husbands about the exchange of the teenagers for the weekend.

  Out in the Village, Kitty and I looked over my prospects. It was like the old days when we were in our twenties and broke and would spend hours talking about men and trying to figure them out as if they were possibly the answer.

  “You were always cute,” she said. “But you never had this many guys interested in you before. Even when you were twenty-five.”

  “I know. And they’re all younger. Something isn’t right.”

  “Let me see your phone,” she said.

  She peered at my profile then laughed. “Well, no wonder. Those are the four best photos of you I’ve ever seen in my life.”

  “Photos?” I screamed. “What photos?”

  I thought there was only the one.

  I grabbed my phone.

  Fucking Tinder. What else had they got on me? And how had they done it?

  Kitty was right. There were three other photos on my profile, all taken back in the old days from some photo shoot where I’d had my hair and makeup done.
/>   I knew the photos had come from my Facebook or Instagram pages but why those photos? Why only the younger ones? What was wrong with the older ones?

  Most of my current photos reveal a smiling yet clearly middle-aged woman who looks like she could possibly be someone’s suburban mom. Had a person—a Tinder person—actually chosen the youthful photographs or had some mysterious sorting program chosen the photographs that were the most mathematically attractive?

  Had Tinder created a fake me?

  This meant that before I’d even had my first Tinder date, I’d become a “false advertiser”—one of those people who make themselves out to be taller, better looking, bigger titted, richer, more glamorous, better traveled, better connected, more successful, and younger online than they actually are irl.

  “What are you going to do now?” Kitty asked.

  I groaned as we looked through my prospects. Richard, twenty-eight, was cute, but he also looked smug and judgy. Chris, twenty-five, was adorable and worked in the tech department at the New York Times but looked like he’d barely graduated from college. I swiped to Jude, thirty-one.

  “What about him?” Kitty asked.

  “He lives in Brooklyn. And he’s in a band. He’s sort of a cliché.”

  “So what? Maybe he’ll take you to some cool clubs in Brooklyn. That would be good for you.”

  Choosing Jude

  It was always going to be Jude I realized a few days later as I was getting ready to go on my one, and I hoped only, Tinder date.

  I zipped up my dress, thinking about how, from the beginning, Jude had contradicted what others had said about men on Tinder. Starting with: “They can’t make plans.”

  Wrong. Jude was a plan maker. It took only five or six or seven texts to arrange our “date”—a drink at a restaurant in Lincoln Square.

  “The guys send dick shots.”

  Nope. Jude couldn’t have been more respectful. After his initial hangover reference, his texts were polite and sober.

  “The guy could turn out to be a psycho killer.”

  I’d been studying Jude’s photographs for days looking for clues, and I was pretty sure I saw genuine kindness in his eyes.

  Every person I’d shown his photo to agreed that he was definitely attractive and very much a “man-man,” whatever that meant. On the other hand, the fact that he was attractive meant he was probably short. After all, you couldn’t get good-looking, nice, and tall on your first spin around Tinder. And then I saw it: the dark hair, the beard, the glittery black eyes; if Jude turned out to be short, he would look exactly like Charles Manson.

  Great.

  A Tinder Unicorn

  As I walked to the restaurant, I realized that Jude would be the very first person I’d ever met online. Even to me, it sounded impossible. How could that be when half of all marriages started online these days?

  I immediately wondered if this Tinder date would become one of those kinds of stories: against all odds, two complete strangers meet on a dating app and end up being together.

  Nooooo.

  I reminded myself that this encounter was pure research. I wasn’t going to have sex with him, he was not going to become my boyfriend, and under no circumstances were we in any way going to be “together” in the near future.

  I entered the restaurant and looked around.

  I saw no one who bore even a passing resemblance to Jude, but what did I know?

  Everyone had said that no one looked like their profile photos anyway.

  I noticed some random guy in a dark shirt and trousers.

  Could he be Jude? He didn’t appear to be looking for anyone, but he wasn’t going anywhere either. He was just standing there, sort of leaning up against the wall. Would Jude do that? Would he just stand there?

  I went up to the guy. “Are you Jude?” I asked.

  He looked at me like I was a piece of crud on the bottom of his shoe.

  “No,” he said sharply.

  I backed off and went to the bar.

  I took a seat next to a woman who was turned away from me. I ordered a white wine with a glass of ice on the side.

  What if Jude didn’t show up?

  He would though. Of that, everyone had assured me. Because people on Tinder put so much work into arranging a meeting, they tended to honor the commitment. So there was that at least.

  Then I suddenly sat straight up.

  The woman on the other side of the woman next to me had begun talking. Loudly.

  She was man bashing.

  I scooted over a little on my stool.

  All I can say is that I’ve heard a lot of man bashing in my life, but this was different. The vitriol, the bitterness, the rage. I hit the Record button and slid my phone closer.

  She immediately stopped talking. I waited a moment, then slid my phone back. I looked at the recording and hit Delete.

  “Excuse me?” she said in a loud, fake-sweet voice.

  Uh-oh.

  “I noticed that as soon as we started talking, you were doing something on your phone. And when we stopped talking, you took your phone back. Were you recording me?”

  Shite. “I was,” I admitted, coming up with a quick explanation about how I was doing a story about Tinder and just wanted to make sure my tape recorder was working.

  “Tinder sucks,” she roared. “It’s the worst. I only go on it if I feel like getting a free drink out of a guy. And most of the time I can’t even get that!”

  I, on the other hand, apparently could, because Jude arrived at that very moment. And, well, let’s just say that he was taller and a lot better looking irl than he was in his photos.

  Had I just found a Tinder unicorn?

  More Blow Jobs

  Almost immediately, in what was now becoming a pattern, Jude started telling me how awful Tinder was and how the guys on it were only interested in one thing: sex.

  “But what kind of sex?” I asked.

  “Blow jobs,” he said grimly.

  “But what about cunnilingus?”

  He shook his head. “Some women don’t like it. Anyway, Tinder is all about the guy getting off. As quickly and as easily as possible.”

  “Surely all men aren’t like that?”

  He said nothing.

  “Are you like that?”

  He shook his shaggy head and ran his hand through his hair, embarrassed.

  I decided that even if Jude had once been “like that,” clearly he was trying to reform. That was probably why he’d agreed to meet with me in the first place.

  Jude ordered a beer and immediately started telling me about his ex-girlfriend.

  Of course, the whole relationship story was sad. It sounded like Jude really, really liked this girl. They were together for over a year, and she was the same age and he said she was a pretty big deal in the music business. She was successful he said.

  But Jude had his own career. He’d spent the last three months touring with his band in Europe. Going to Berlin and places like that. Getting paid.

  “I might want to move to Berlin,” he said, glancing down shyly.

  I’d had half a glass of wine by then and was feeling more relaxed. “You won’t move to Berlin,” I said reassuringly.

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Because it’s stupid. It’s a waste of time. Far better to make what you’ve got here work.” I almost patted his hand. “Don’t worry. It will all be fine.”

  Or maybe it won’t.

  Jude revealed that his family was troubled. He thought his father was bipolar. His uncle had killed himself. Meanwhile, his grandmother insisted on ignoring it all.

  “It’s years of undiagnosed mental illness,” he said, reminding me of my conversation with the Tinderellas.

  Jude promised that he was okay and, perhaps feeling like he’d revealed too muc
h, changed the topic to a recent trip he’d taken to Berlin. He listed a handful of drugs he’d consumed on a three-day bender. I was tempted to remind him that taking illegal drugs in a foreign country was almost always a really bad idea, but I didn’t want to sound like his mother.

  I gently steered the topic back to Tinder.

  Jude pointed out that Tinder was gamed against women because it was created by the sexist minds of men who wanted to increase their chances of getting laid.

  “It’s all about what can you do for me? Men see women as commodities. Objects. Because it’s on a screen,” Jude explained. “That makes it not real. You can take that image of a woman and do whatever you want to her in your brain.”

  We talked about the male gaze and how awful it was. About how Tinder brought out the worst in guys, reducing them to nothing more than their base instincts.

  The Ugly Truth

  I woke up the next morning with what felt like an emotional hangover.

  I felt bad about Jude I realized as I brushed my teeth.

  This didn’t make any sense. Why should I feel bad about him? After all, one was supposed to operate on Tinder without feelings, meaning one could assume the other person didn’t have feelings either, so it didn’t matter.

  On the other hand, Jude had told me a whole bunch of stuff about his life and I was slightly worried for him. I knew I’d never see him again, but nonetheless, I wanted good things to happen to him because he was nice to me when he could have been a complete asshole.

  And this, I realized, was the problem. I’d had a good experience on Tinder.

  Valley of the Man Negs

  So what was up with Jude’s man negging I wondered.

  I called my friend Sam. Sam, who was twenty-five, would tell me the truth.

  “S’up,” he said.