“I’ve been here probably 600 zillion times,” said Nadia Newman, 22, a billowy Brooklynite who was enjoying a moist chocolate treat. “It’s so soft, it’s absolutely fluffy,” she said, without a trace of remorse. She said she was a singer and that her record label had told her to lose weight, but she was unable to break her weekly Magnolia habit. For her it began late one evening after she noticed a trail of grown adults carrying cupcakes in the West Village and followed them to the shop. “It’s a scene,” she said. “It’s a real hangout.”

“I come here at least three times a week. At least,” said Janelle Yater, 28, who lives on Cornelia Street and works in sales. “I come here by myself alone at night.” She proclaimed the cupcakes “fulfillment.”

She’s not alone. The steely, anorexic ambition that consumed this city for the better part of the last century is taking a snack break. And we’re not talking Veggie Booty, folks. Think big, gooey melted chocolate cookies from City Bakery; pints of real Ben & Jerry’s (no more frozen yogurt!); huge slabs of coconut cake at Bubby’s. Take a look around: New York is fat as a house, and enjoying it.

The city’s new layer of fat is not the apologetic fat of yore; it’s a fat that pronounces itself. It’s the fuck-you fat of James Gandolfini and Rosie O’Donnell and Alec Baldwin; the perky, focused fat of Hairspray sensation Marissa Jaret Winokur and gyrating television teen Kelly Osbourne; the born-again baby fat of pudgy pitcher David Wells; the horny bombshell fat of model Sophie Dahl and rock star Pink.

Call it survivor fat for impending God-knows-what, call it carpe diem, call it simple self-indulgence, but in any event, call the pizza parlor!

More evidence that socking away cupcakes and Skittles has replaced sex as New Yorkers’ favorite vice: The New York Times is covering food as if it were a war, adding unapologetically plump-armed British “domestic goddess” Nigella Lawson and Random House editor at large Jason Epstein to an already bulging roster. Mr. Epstein said that he was approached by the Times after Sept. 11, given carte blanche, and found himself inspired by culinary writer M.F.K. Fisher. “She wrote about food and love when Europe was collapsing in the 30’s,” he said. “Hitler was taking over, the fascists were killing people, and she wrote about sitting down to eat.”

At the Magnolia Bakery, three men in their 30’s--who, in another era, might have been lining up to enlist--were sitting down to stuff their faces with milk and cake at a small iron table. Behind the counter, an employee was spreading thick, yellow icing on a fat, round cake while another slid a hunk of white-chocolate macadamia-nut cheese cake into a customer’s waiting hand and grooved to the music, Iggy Pop’s “Lust for Life.”

“This is all fattening,” said Barbara DiNicola, Magnolia’s manager. “All flour, whole eggs, butter and sugar.” She said the place was churning out thousands and thousands of cupcakes daily; six years ago, it was hundreds. “People think this place is a nightclub, because of the crowds outside,” Ms. DiNicola said. Down the street, a new bakery, Polka Dot Cake Studio, recently opened, perhaps to siphon off those who can’t wait half an hour for one of Magnolia’s sugar bombs.

The West Village is hardly the only neighborhood with an expanding waistline. At the City Bakery on 18th Street, owner and head chef Maury Rubin said cookie sales have gone up in the last six months.

“Our highest seller is cookies and cookies and cookies,” he said. “We sell a monumental number of cookies every day. I won’t disclose the exact number, but it’s in the ‘beyond several hundred’ category. Chocolate chip is the most popular, of course. People are enjoying all kinds of foods that are otherwise under the--in my mind, idiotic--category of ‘sinful.’”

“Anorexia’s so out,” said a City Bakery customer named Skye Stuart. “That was so three years ago. Nowadays, women, especially, are just like, ‘Fuck you, I’m eating whatever I want, and if you don’t like it, I’ll find somebody who will.’”

On a recent afternoon at Dylan’s Candy Bar, the regressive bonbon emporium on 60th Street and Third Avenue owned by Ralph Lauren’s daughter, a 24-year-old production assistant named Heather Ward had dropped in, as she does regularly, to indulge what she called her “little sugar addiction.” She usually gets the Rice Krispies treats but was eyeing a tray of chocolate-covered graham crackers. “These look good,” she said.

Dylan’s Candy salespeople said that the busiest hours were not in the afternoon after school, when parents help kids choose their gummy bears, but in the evening right before closing. The customers then are adults, and they’re buying for themselves. “They’re even more wild than the kids,” said Jaclyn Ayala. “They’re beasts sometimes.”

Her colleague, Nilsa Mena, was wearing a turquoise T-shirt that hugged her curves. She said she’d gained 20 pounds--“and counting”--in her six months at the store. “I’m gonna eat my burgers and my candy and I don’t care if I weigh 280 pounds,” she said. “The meaning of life is to enjoy it, and I’m gonna enjoy it.”

Gourmet magazine editor in chief and former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl has noticed that New Yorkers are eating more heartily. “It’s about time!” she said. “I certainly think that in the wake of Sept. 11 people started feeling vulnerable and as if they should enjoy themselves as much as possible. Life started feeling very precious. So they started giving themselves permission and silencing that little voice that says, ‘Don’t eat that.’ People started living their lives with more gusto.”

“We all have a natural body type and part of the whole diet craziness is to be something that we’re not,” said Ms. Reichl. “So this is saying, ‘Relax, be the body type that you are, you can eat normally.’ And people did relax. And the consequences really weren’t so horrible. If you enjoyed your food, you weren’t going to blow up. You can relax and enjoy your food and you don’t have to feel guilty about it, it doesn’t mean you have to gain a million pounds.”

Kurt Gutenbrunner, the chef at Wallsé, the Austrian place on West 11th Street, agreed. “For the longest time we overdid it with the wild arugula salad and the Diet Coke,” he said. “Slowly we realized it doesn’t work, we can’t survive on wild arugula salad and Diet Coke. If I put goulash on the menu, it flies out of the restaurant. If I took off the spätzle, there would be a mini-revolution.”

At Bubby’s in Tribeca, manager Vincent Barile said, “‘Save room for pie!’ is our motto here. Now people are eating more and saving room for pie. There’s no more ‘I can’t have this’ and ‘I shouldn’t order that.’ You just don’t hear it anymore. Now we see a lot more ‘healthy’ customers than before, if you know what I mean. This place was a mini-California before. Now Ben Affleck orders the famous Frog Parker Pulled Pork sandwich. J. Lo orders to-go a lot--she likes the barbecue chicken.”

And how does Zagat favorite Danny Meyer (owner of Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Tabla, Eleven Madison Park, etc.) weigh in?

“I can verify that people are less afraid of looking like a protagonist in a Rubens painting,” he said. “When we recently opened Blue Smoke for lunch, with no fanfare, I frankly thought no one would eat barbecue for lunch. But today there were tons of people gorging on barbecue, ribs and sticky toffee pudding. They’re washing those ribs down with--when it’s not beer or bourbon, it’s typically a root-beer float. I’m noticing more voracious consumption also at Eleven Madison Park in the past few months. At dinnertime, we cannot keep up with chocolate soufflés, and those are chocolate soufflés for two. We can’t keep them in the house. Our most popular entrée is the côte de boeuf, a roast beef for two. It comes with potato gratin.

“If I think back to 10 years ago, when I first got into the restaurant business, I notice that now people are more active,” he said. “I think people feel more comfortable with themselves and their bodies and food is something you can indulge in more when you’re exercising.”

Eddie Pugsley, the manager of Smith & Wollensky steak house, said business is up. After Sept. 11, he said, “we were contemplating closing. But now steaks are being eaten at numbers that we didn’t think would be possible only 12 months after. Smiles are on the customers’ faces.”

Bill Yosses is the pastry chef at Citarella in midtown.

“Now, when people indulge, they will go for rich desserts, but they have to be high quality,” he said. “If that’s the case, they’re ready to dive in. There’s more joie de vivre about eating, a European sense of enjoying life to the fullest and eating well. I started a 12-bean vanilla ice cream, whereas most ice creams are only one or two bean. We serve as many desserts as we do main courses here. At this time of year we have a new Concord grape dessert with a cheese-cake soufflé.

“There’s definitely been a priority change,” he added. “That bony look was never attractive. There’s definitely a fuller look today. People are getting over the food phobias of the past. Crazy diets are not in.”

Cheryl Sleade, the pastry chef at Bouley, agreed.

“I know in my own personal life I notice a difference,” she said. “I think people are eating things they feel more enjoyment for. People come in specifically to try the desserts. I’m in a little bit of a food rut personally, because I’m eating a lot of comfort food and not a lot of variety. Right now I eat more what I enjoy. Soon after Sept. 11 my friends and I were laughing about how all of us were eating really hearty food. One person said it was Freudian, in that it means you are ready to take in the world and so you eat more. He had remembered studying that. When everything is bizarre and horrible and then when you’re ready to accept these events, you eat. I remember all of us commenting that we had such appetites.”

“Everybody orders desserts at our restaurant,” she added. “They not only get a dessert, they get a dessert soup first.”

DR. SELMAN: How do we define “frustrate”?

HILLY: He’s trying to be as tolerant and patient as possible, but he lets it build up and all of a sudden he just … um … well, he gets upset if I’m trying to clean or iron my clothes—

DR. SELMAN: Is that true, George?

GEORGE: Well, there has been some turbulence, and let me address that—but let’s start off with last night. Took her to Café Luxembourg—$120. Would have been more had she ordered that blueberry sorbet. Then we got home, and that’s when she went into this frenzied state of activity—started off with a shower, then escalated. It’s like there’s never not a sound, whether it’s vacuuming, ironing, polishing the teapot—that was the one that set me off. She was really scrubbing that teapot. Caught her doing that. Then there’s walking around in flip-flops—snap, snap, snap—because she says the sisal rug, what, cuts up your feet?

HILLY: No, there are these little splinters in it that get into my feet, and they stay in there for 12 hours. And it hurts.

GEORGE: Even when she’s “sitting still,” she’s not sitting still—her feet are moving, jittering. [GEORGE demonstrates.] I know I’m sounding unreasonable. She’s been bending over backwards and walking on eggshells, but she’s driving me bananas.

DR. SELMAN: Why do you think you’re being unreasonable?

GEORGE: Because this is all normal stuff. I’m very sensitive to noise. I think I have tinnitus or something where you hear things—

DR. SELMAN: Tinnitus is ringing in the ears.

GEORGE: It’s not that, but something like that, where I hear everything times 10. I’m complaining about her, but just let me get it all out, because I think I might be unable to live with someone—anyone—in a small space, except for a cat. Hilly sometimes has kind of a nervous energy, and that makes me nervous. It happened last night. We’d been out to dinner, I’d had some rum—I don’t know, maybe it was I’d been working all day and I’d had some stimulants throughout the day ….

DR. SELMAN: Some stimulants?

GEORGE: Coffee and cigarettes and maybe a couple nibbles of Ritalin. Like one. Half. A halfie.

DR. SELMAN: How big a Ritalin?

GEORGE: Oh, they’re little white things. It’s like a cup of coffee. So we were watching King Kong, and Hilly was wearing her negligee, and—is this going to embarrass you?

[Silence.]

GEORGE: She just looked great. The right part of the top had fallen down—

DR. SELMAN: Which King Kong?

GEORGE: The third one. The Jessica Lange one was better.

DR. SELMAN: The Fay Wray is a classic. So Hilly was reminding you of the Fay Wray character?

GEORGE: No, she was reminding me of a Playboy Playmate from 1973. So we had great, great sex in the middle of the movie. So I’m relaxed—that’s one way to get me less stressed out! Last night I’d gotten her a two-liter Diet Coke, and this morning I wake up to find that she had guzzled half of it. A whole liter of Diet Coke. Reaction? Normal? That’s a lot.

DR. SELMAN: You’re telling me you’re doing Nicorette, coffee, smoking, Ritalin, and you’re worried—

GEORGE: Point taken. O.K., forget that. She’s been sneaking drinks. I went up to her cubbyhole, and she has the remnants of Diet Coke and rum in glasses. So then I’m walking back to my room and I see my wallet, and I just knew there was money missing. What I do normally is bring my wallet into my room. I have to hide my wallet. I looked in there and there was nothing left. I called her up and said, “You took $40,” and she said, “Twenty.” Now tell me the truth—20 or 40?

HILLY: Twenty!

GEORGE: O.K. Can we try to keep the focus on Hilly this session? I get, I respect the point that I should be on a mood stabilizer and “How long is Hilly going to put up with me?” and the co-dependency thing—but Hilly, can you admit that you have eaten and guzzled other people’s food and drinks over the years?

HILLY: Yes.

GEORGE: So you’re notorious for doing that?

HILLY: I don’t know if I would say “notorious,” but ….

GEORGE: Not to give you a hard time, but did you also recently admit that you have driven people crazy over the years?

HILLY: Two people come to mind, who I think are extremely intolerant people: my mother and my host father when I was an exchange student. Who was a Nazi.

DR. SELMAN: You’re saying that Hilly is driving you crazy?

GEORGE: That’s another question I was going to ask: Hilly, am I driving you crazy?

DR. SELMAN: She started out tonight saying she thought that you were being patient.

HILLY: I think you are being patient, but the thing I just don’t understand is why you’re not more anxious to move. Find a place that’s bigger. When I do all these nit-picking things, like trying to clean, it’s in an attempt to make it more comfortable during the time that we’re there together.

GEORGE: You’re right—we agreed we were going to look for apartments, and I backed out of it twice. However, let’s stick with one thing: You don’t need to be polishing and scrubbing a teapot and the silverware.

HILLY: The silver was mine, and I was doing that because it was tarnished. You complained that you’ve been running out of forks and spoons. So I thought if I polished these and washed them—

GEORGE: You’ve been worried all day about the dishes in the sink. She sent me an e-mail about it.

HILLY: Because he said three days ago that I couldn’t do any more cleaning. He doesn’t want to hear running water.

DR. SELMAN: What’s wrong with wanting to clean up?

GEORGE: I just think that all of this activity in general, all this constant movement—I don’t know if it’s Prozac-related or O.C.D. or nervous energy ….

DR. SELMAN: It seems like the stuff you’re complaining about with her seems normal—that she would want to keep the apartment clean.

GEORGE: It’s the constant noise and fidgeting—

DR. SELMAN: Who wants dishes in the sink? That’s not even sanitary.

GEORGE: Constant fidgeting makes me nervous.

DR. SELMAN: She’s not fidgeting now.

GEORGE: You’re seeing her right now, after work, she’s in her nice business outfit—

DR. SELMAN: You’re fidgeting more than she is!

GEORGE: O.K. Fine. I can relax, I can sit still—she can’t sit still in our apartment for more than eight minutes. She gets up at least every eight minutes. Wait, let me finish—you don’t see her at 11 p.m., when she’s doing this, that and the other thing ….

DR. SELMAN: Well, Hilly, is this all true?

HILLY: Well, yes, especially because I’m basically sitting at my desk all day, so by the time I get home, I want to do stuff. Plus I’m not completely settled in.

DR. SELMAN: You’re living in a messy, crammed space.

GEORGE: I’d think after a hard day of work you’d like to unwind, sit still, relax.

DR. SELMAN: Maybe it’s hard for her to relax in a mess.

HILLY: That’s exactly it. I can’t. I sit down and I can’t focus on something because I see something else that draws my attention, like a pile of stuff.

DR. SELMAN: Could you wear something to block out the sound?

GEORGE: I’m not quite getting this across. The other night I had my headphones on, I was transcribing in my office, and she crept in, hid behind the dresser, then jumped out and yelled “Boo!” I almost had a heart attack.

[HILLY and DR. SELMAN laugh.]

GEORGE: Remember how she said she was the teacher’s pet in school? And she was a spoiled tattletale? She really was Rhoda in The Bad Seed. Rhoda was a real sweet and charming girl, but she was a serial killer. You don’t see her at 11:30 p.m. when she’s had her Sancerre. All this nervous energy, and then all of a sudden this woozy—

DR. SELMAN: I hate to tell you this, but she seems relaxed by comparison to you.

GEORGE: Well, I’m talking and we’re having an animated conversation and I’m eating Nicorette and drinking coffee—I want to get all this out.

DR. SELMAN: I think you need to find out how much Ritalin you’re taking. Look at the bottle.

GEORGE: It’s a little tiny white pill, the smallest dosage.

DR. SELMAN: The smallest dosage is the yellow pill.

GEORGE: Where were we? There’s been some turbulence. The other night, it was the same sort of fidgeting, and I just walked out.

HILLY: I asked you if it was O.K. if I ironed—

GEORGE: We were watching this funny satire British TV show, and Hilly was ironing for an hour straight right behind me—

DR. SELMAN: But she asked you if it was O.K.

GEORGE: I thought it would be O.K., but it just didn’t stop, and she did it like she was working out.

HILLY: Wait, I just have to bring this up before I forget it. That same day he told me, “Enough with the cleaning! I don’t want to hear running water!”—and then last night he yelled, “Why haven’t these dishes been washed?!”

[Silence.]

GEORGE: Do you think any of this could be Prozac-related? Does that stir up all her energy in any way?

DR. SELMAN: Do you want to talk to Dr. Lamm about this? If it’s even a problem? You know, this is George’s perception.

GEORGE: We did talk to Dr. Lamm about the drinking, and he agreed with me—that when your girlfriend drinks Sancerre every single night, it can be a sexual turnoff.

DR. SELMAN: You just told me you found her so terribly attractive while you were watching TV.

GEORGE: Yes, but it should happen more. So I’m wondering if I should say, “Look, I’m really sorry, but if you have more than two drinks, I can’t have sex.”

HILLY: Well, when I have people constantly criticizing me and shouting at me and not wanting to listen to my opinion about things, then I’m not sexually turned on and I turn to my other lover, the bottle of wine.

GEORGE: Uh, I think you turn to that no matter what.

DR. SELMAN: You say you drink because of his hostility and disinterest?

HILLY: Yes, sure, a lot of the time.

GEORGE: Oh, come on! You’ve averaged five drinks a night for the past I don’t know how many years … and you’ve been on Prozac for 10 years. I don’t mean to be a dick, O.K., but wouldn’t it be productive to talk about this? Because here’s the deal: You want to get engaged, O.K., and all this stuff—I’m totally O.K. with us getting a two-bedroom apartment. As far as getting engaged, there’s no way I can do that if there’s that much alcohol.

DR. SELMAN: Why don’t you both quit drinking?

GEORGE: I’m going get in trouble for saying this, but I think I can drink and be coherent. I can have two drinks and—

DR. SELMAN: I don’t hear any evidence that she’s not coherent.

GEORGE: I hear the white wine in her voice, or that alcohol-Prozac mixture in her voice, around 11 p.m. She sounds drunk, and I don’t want to hear it even after three drinks.

DR. SELMAN: The original complaint was that she fidgets, moves around the apartment and makes noise, is distracting, and you have trouble with that. Now this is something else.

GEORGE: I would also like it if she would take cooking classes.

DR. SELMAN: What does that got to do with it?

GEORGE: That’s important if we’re going to be engaged.

HILLY: I can’t cook if I can’t clean the kitchen, because there’s nowhere to cook.

GEORGE: I don’t want to upset you, but the spaghetti you made me—

DR. SELMAN: O.K., I think we’re a little bit off the topic here—

GEORGE: —was soupy.

HILLY: That’s fine. And it’s O.K. It was from a jar anyway.

GEORGE: I’ll go to cooking classes with you!

DR. SELMAN: Well, if you’re willing to go to cooking classes with her, why don’t you go to A.A. with her?

GEORGE: Um. Want to?

HILLY: No. Yes, sure. I don’t know. I’d rather find a larger apartment.

DR. SELMAN: It just sounds absurd that someone who drinks as much as you would be critical of her for drinking.

GEORGE: Some people, when they stay at home—I may do some binge drinking, but— when they stay at home, they can have one or two drinks. She’s a different kind of drinker, and it makes her go inner. It makes her become less present. I can’t communicate with her.

DR. SELMAN: I would like some input from Hilly. You’ve been primarily silent about all of this. Any thoughts? I don’t hear you saying, “I get home at night and I’m agitated and I’m fidgety and I can’t sit still, and I have to go in and clean dishes or silverware or clean the apartment or rearrange stuff.” And you’re not presenting that to me as a problem. He’s presenting that as a problem that you have that bothers him. You are not presenting it as a problem at all.

HILLY: My problem is, I can’t take care of those anxious feelings. I can’t finish cleaning the floor in the bathroom because the next morning I have to get ready in the bathroom with the door shut, so basically I have to put my handbag and my cosmetics and everything down on the surface that’s not clean, like where people have gone to the bathroom, and it’s disgusting. And I’m not even allowed to mop the floor in there! It’s frustrating. So we’re sitting there watching a movie, and all I can think about is: “Oh gosh, tomorrow morning I can’t wait to put my Chloé linen skirt that was however many hundreds of dollars I bought years ago down on this, like, pubic-hair-covered floor.” It’s disgusting!

GEORGE: Ha ha ha ha ha.

[To be continued.]

—George Gurley

Prior Articles:

George and Hilly published 05/01/06
George and Hilly published 04/17/06
George and Hilly published 04/03/06
George and Hilly published 03/20/06
George and Hilly published 02/6/06
George and Hilly published 01/23/06
George and Hilly published 01/16/06
George and Hilly published 12/26/05
George and Hilly published 11/14/05
George and Hilly published 11/07/05
George and Hilly published 10/24/05
George and Hilly published 10/17/05
George and Hilly published 10/10/05
George and Hilly published 10/03/05
George ’n’ Hilly, Back in Couples, Turn on the Doc published 09/26/05
But Should We Get Married? Part III published 08/29/05
But Should We Get Married? published 08/15/05
Should I Get Married? My Hilly Joining Me In Couples Session published 08/08/05

HILLY: Nothing.

[ Silence.]

GEORGE: You say something first—I always feel guilty about starting off.

HILLY: George has been pretty depressed. He keeps slipping into catatonic states. But last weekend it was my birthday and he took me to D.C. It was really fun, but a bunch of times he slipped into this strange state that I’d never seen him in before. It’s like he’s staring off into the distance, and he doesn’t look sad and he doesn’t look happy. He stays like that for sometimes up to 20 minutes.

DR. SELMAN: Something new?

HILLY: Yes.

GEORGE: I don’t know what sets it off. I think one thing—and I don’t want you to take it the wrong way—is that I’ve been spending a lot of time with you, and you alone, for months. It’s like we’re in each other’s world. It’s happened in the past: The personality of the other person I’ve been hanging out with rubs off on me. This trip, though, there were more highlights then lowlights, right?

HILLY: The coolest thing was, I was so excited that you got up so easily each day and were willing to do things.

GEORGE: There was so much activity. That might be part of it, too. The lack of sleep—we did so much stuff, it was exhausting. I imagine that a married man with a family would have gone through those periods too, going to all those museums. Right?

DR. SELMAN: Are you concerned about these states that occur?

GEORGE: A little bit. But I think it could be this time of year. In D.C., we rode on this racecar simulator; it turns you upside down, flips you around. When I walked out, it was like my brain chemistry had changed. In a good way.

HILLY: That’s right! He was in one of his little states before we got into the simulator. And they were playing loud music and you hear loud car noises, and right in the middle of it he said, “I feel better now!”

GEORGE: We were laughing. God, it was great. Then things went downhill—when was it? The next one that set me off was, we were looking at the First Lady exhibit … or at Bobby Van’s?

HILLY: The guy in the next booth at the restaurant who was shaking and you were feeling it—

GEORGE: Not a very good dinner. The steak was so-so. Our dessert was good. It was Hilly’s birthday.

DR. SELMAN: Happy birthday.

HILLY: Thank you!

GEORGE: What else did we do that was fun? I took a bubble bath on Saturday night, and Hilly ordered a bottle of champagne.

HILLY: It was my birthday!

GEORGE: Room service! I got mad at her. Oh, and sex! That’s what got me out of those moods! Our sex life has greatly improved lately. This weekend especially. Wasn’t it?

HILLY: Mmm-hmm.

GEORGE: Also, they had a mirror on the wall at the Hay-Adams. Now do you think that that’s …. You know what I’m talking about, like a mirror? That’s normal, healthy sexual behavior?

DR. SELMAN: It seems perfectly normal compared to some of the other stuff I’ve heard.

GEORGE: I’ve always avoided … um …. I worried that that’s kinda kinky, ’cause I thought that if like you went down that road, maybe you’d have to have a mirror every time or something.

DR. SELMAN: Well, that’s easily done.

GEORGE: Yep! But what if the whole time I’m looking in the mirror? Well, that’s kinda weird, right?

HILLY: Well, who are you looking at—yourself?

GEORGE: Yeah—that would be bad. I mean, no, I think I glimpsed over there a couple times, and I was like, “Hey, this is kinda fun.” Anyway! How do you feel about that?

HILLY: Weird.

GEORGE: Ha ha ha ha. The mirror factor.

DR. SELMAN: The last time we met, you were going on a hiatus. So how did tonight’s session come about?

GEORGE: Right. Well, I got some money. I’m much more financially secure. But in the last two weeks, I’ve spent $3,000, just on that weekend, and I bought this plane ticket—I’m going with Hilly to Rome.

HILLY: We’re going February.

DR. SELMAN: I’ll give you some restaurant information. I even know a good bar there for you.

GEORGE: Now, how can you—are you giving us permission to drink? Because you know we’re gonna do it, no matter what. O.K. Last Tuesday I had a spinout night. A bad night. Went out—didn’t want to, but somehow I let myself get seduced. I’ve never experienced so much regret the next day. I really behaved obnoxiously.

DR. SELMAN: What happened?

GEORGE: I just got rowdy with a couple of dudes. I went to this place where I always hang out, and I think I may be banned.

DR. SELMAN: The Bellevue bar?

GEORGE: No, another place. And I tried to get free drinks or something. Let’s just say it was a disaster. But I haven’t gone out since then. So it might have been a blessing in disguise. This time it might’ve really hit home.

HILLY: You tried to go out on Saturday!

GEORGE: Ha ha ha. I suggested it, and you said you didn’t want to and we stayed in, right? And watched Roman Holiday.

DR. SELMAN: What happened on the night out?

GEORGE: Exactly what I said—I made a request for free drinks.

DR. SELMAN: For yourself?

GEORGE: Yes. And a friend of mine. And asked for it maybe three times. That was it!

DR. SELMAN: Why would you be banned for that? Unless there are things which happened that you don’t recall.

GEORGE: No, no, no. I’m not like that. I don’t have blackouts. That’s pretty much it. I was ashamed of my behavior. So … Rome! I was there in 1999; I was just completely happy, stable. And what are those little sandwiches?

HILLY: Panini?

GEORGE: Yes! That was all it took. What did we do this weekend? We spent the weekend together. Am I changing the subject?

DR. SELMAN: Now that you mention it.

[ Silence.]

HILLY: What did we do? I went to work on Saturday. Then I came over to your house. And you were in the state.

GEORGE: I got in the catatonic state?

HILLY: Yes! And finally you got your stuff together and went to Barnes & Noble and bought a book on Rome. Then I went back to your apartment, and you went to the gym, and I worked on my project.

DR. SELMAN: Let me ask you—are you disturbed or troubled by these catatonic states that he gets into?

HILLY: Um, yes. But I think that he worries too much about things that are out of his control. And doesn’t have as much confidence in himself as he should. I think those things contribute to his catatonic states.

GEORGE: Was I like that when you first met me?

HILLY: No.

GEORGE: See, this is one thing I’ve been thinking of. When Hilly first met me, I was kind of riding high. Making more money and I was sort of Mr. Popular. I had a posse, and I was living in this great apartment, rent-stabilized, two bedrooms, two bathrooms. I had it made—then I got evicted. Wait, that’s not it. I think it’s pretty clear that I’m having a minor midlife crisis. I’m turning 38. And it’s like, whatever happened to being 18? People are calling me “sir”—I go to the deli or Starbucks ….

DR. SELMAN: I think that people can have more than one crisis throughout the middle of their life. It’s sort of a rethinking of the direction in which they’re going in their lives. And often results in change. Which is not necessarily a bad thing.

GEORGE: I always thought that by the time I was this age, I would be doing a lot better. I wonder about this column, too, that it may be a bad idea. If success is measured by the number of—I mean, Hilly, do I seem to be getting invited to more things? I’m not getting flooded with invitations to parties.

HILLY: I don’t think so, no.

GEORGE: I just worry that there’s this whiff of failure wafting off the pages.

DR. SELMAN: It occurs to me that by having the column as your focus, you’ve created a perverse effect—in that, when you first started coming, your stated goal was to maintain the status quo. And now I think the column has tied the two of you together in some way that may be … unintended.

HILLY: Well, that sounds positive, right?

DR. SELMAN: It could be interpreted however you want. I didn’t say it in a judgmental sense of positive or negative.

GEORGE: My point is, this column, the couples therapy, is all I think about now. And so maybe I need to make a real effort to get outside myself, to get away from this a little.

DR. SELMAN: Or not!

GEORGE: Or not! Now I’m confused. One thing I thought—and you may think I’m being ridiculous, but I will do this; it’ll be good for my mood and my image—have someone build me a giant Big Wheel.

DR. SELMAN: A Ferris wheel?

GEORGE: No. A Big Wheel. Big … Wheel. Little kids ride around, and they go like this? An adult-sized one. I would ride it down Broadway to work.

HILLY: There are all kinds of childish things that George loves. Last Easter, when I did the Easter-egg hunt for you and your brother in Palm Beach …. And then the bubble baths—of course! And then, all kinds of little childlike things. Sometimes you talk in a baby voice. Or when you make little baby faces. It’s adorable!

GEORGE: No, what if I really did it? Don’t you think that there’s a chance that this could catch on?

HILLY: No. It’d be gross. Because you’re so low to the ground in a Big Wheel in Manhattan.

[ Silence.]

GEORGE: So can I make a couple of comments, I mean complaints? Hilly does this thing. This is not so bad, but when she comes over, I’ll go to the grocery store and bring back stuff to drink, Diet Coke and cranberry juice—and she manages to polish a lot of it off pretty fast, which is fine. I’m happy to do that, but she does one thing—she’ll drink 98 percent of the liter of Diet Coke and she’ll leave a little bit. I’ve told you before to just throw it out.

DR. SELMAN: I don’t understand.

GEORGE: She’ll drink something and leave a little in there, but not enough for me to have—

DR. SELMAN: You think she should just pour it out?

GEORGE: It’s something a hippie freeloader would do. Because they’re able to say, “Hey, I didn’t finish it, there’s still some in there!” Anyway. That’s the only complaint I can think of.

DR. SELMAN: The only complaint?

GEORGE: Well, I can think of one more. I went to the grocery store Saturday and got burgers and we ended up at this restaurant, 150 bucks.

HILLY: Yes, but I only had one appetizer, $15, and two glasses of wine.

DR. SELMAN: And the soda at the bottom of the bottle, has he ever—

HILLY: Yes, he has. There have been many late-night e-mails, freak-outs about that. And yelling and phone calls in the middle of the night—it really makes him mad.

GEORGE: Maybe with the Diet Coke, you filled up the glass to the top and there was no more room. Well, just throw the rest away.

DR. SELMAN: You argue over this?

GEORGE: It’s just seeing the inch and half of Diet Coke ….

HILLY: There are a lot of things in your apartment—I don’t understand, it’s one of the most disgusting, vile things to me. It’s when somebody puts a cigarette out in something other than an ashtray, especially when there are ashtrays in the house. You’ve stopped doing that, but why would you want to put your earplugs when you wake up in the morning on the same table as an ashtray and some old food and receipts—why don’t you put them in a clean place? And chewed Nicorette. But it’s fine, I think it’s all cute because it’s you who’s doing it. But people are always going to have those little pet peeves with each other.

DR. SELMAN: We’re really accomplishing a lot today.

GEORGE: Yesterday we had a good day, right?

HILLY: We went to the Whitney and-

GEORGE: What did you think of the Whitney?

HILLY: The fifth floor was pretty cool.

GEORGE: Then we went to the Frick—

DR. SELMAN: What would happen if the column became boring?

GEORGE: What I was just saying was boring?

HILLY: I’ve had people tell me that they think that it’s possible that George, you’re using the column as an emotional shield.

GEORGE: What’s that mean?

HILLY: To make couples therapy so public, and to think about what you’re going to say beforehand, defeats the purpose. Instead of addressing the relationship, you’re turning it into a game or a toy.

DR. SELMAN: I agree with you. That’s kind of my job, to not let that happen.

GEORGE: O.K., well, may I say something? Like I said, these thoughts keep popping up, and I’ve been wanting to bring them up. Because here I am, it’s been 23 years since I’ve been in therapy and—

DR. SELMAN: But if you come in with an agenda, then it’s lacking in spontaneity. Why don’t you just say whatever pops into your mind?

GEORGE: O.K., point taken. O.K. O.K., let’s be spontaneous. O.K.

[ Silence.]

GEORGE: O.K. Emotional shield? Maybe I’m sort of trapped inside this column. What is that Jean-Paul Sartre play ….

DR. SELMAN: How do you see yourself as trapped?

HILLY: Huis Clos.

GEORGE: No Exit, yeah. There was an X-Files episode like that, too.

DR. SELMAN: So in Washington—it felt like you were a family?

HILLY: Yeah, what was that all about? “Married man”?

DR. SELMAN: Married man.

GEORGE: Well, I’ve been around only Hilly for months, and we’ve been going out for four years now. Spent much more time with you than ever.

DR. SELMAN: Feeling trapped in the relationship.

GEORGE: No, that’s not the right word. There’s one problem here—O.K., we have to talk about Dr. Selman. The last couple sessions, afterward we’ve gone to dinner and talked about you. It’s nothing serious, we still want to come here, everything’s great. But there were a couple things, some constructive criticism? [ To HILLY.] You start.

DR. SELMAN: O.K., go ahead.

HILLY: Sometimes we feel that you don’t care about who we really are. And we think if you did care, you might ask more questions.

GEORGE: The first eight, nine sessions were great, but the last few we’ve found ourselves at dinner having these sort of … feelings.

HILLY: Sometimes I feel you can be too critical without being willing to listen to, or interpret, the positive aspects of our relationship. Sometimes it seems that you are trying to get me to wake up to the fact that George is no good and make me stop liking him as much as I do. We would like you to describe what you think of our relationship in clear, precise language. And it seems like you are always quick to bring up our issues and problems with drinking, but you don’t seem to want to delve into the reasons why we drink like we do. Sometimes it seems like you try to pit us against each other. Sometimes I worry that our three personalities aren’t always communicating effectively. With my previous individual therapist, a woman, I was able to open up more with her, divulge information, because she seemed to like coddle me more.

GEORGE: Should we pause and let Dr. Selman respond to these?

DR. SELMAN: No, keep going.

HILLY: Only a couple more. You seem to take a more direct approach, which I find threatening in life, both personally and professionally, and that’s possibly why I don’t open up as much. Sometimes I get the feeling that you’re fed up with us. Sometimes you have an angry expression on your face. But sometimes it’s the exact opposite, and you warm up and laugh and you’re very engaging. And if we could, we’d like to combine couples therapy with individual therapy here. For example, if one of us discusses a dream we’ve had, it’s because we think it’s relevant to our relationship. We aren’t sure what kind of psychiatrist you are. We don’t understand what your philosophies are. Like George is confused about the photo on the wall of Freud’s office.

GEORGE: Can I add a few things? I just remember the first sessions feeling exhilarated—we’re here to make it work; the act of going to therapy, period, has been good, and you’ve been really good—but sometimes we’re sort of bummed-out after sessions. Remember when you said this relationship works “such as it is”? What does “such as it is” mean?

HILLY: Don’t you mean that we tolerate each other despite the things that we complain about? But because neither of us is like adult enough to make any of the changes, the relationship will just either stay as it is, or completely fall apart?

DR. SELMAN: I think you have in some sense a very good relationship.

GEORGE: How so?

DR. SELMAN: Because of the fact that you’re together for all this time.

GEORGE: That’s great to hear.

DR. SELMAN: And you had certain goals when you came in. Yours, of course, was maintaining the status quo.

GEORGE: Right. Not the best goal, right?

DR. SELMAN: Well, it’s your goal. [ To HILLY.] Your goal I’m less clear about. Again, my sense of it is that things have shifted despite yourselves, and that you’ve probably, to some extent, grown closer together.

GEORGE: Sometimes you’ve made remarks—my being the recipient of some of those comments—which were sort of sarcastic. I started to think that maybe you were trying to get Hilly to wake up to this idea that I am this scoundrel, that she’s better off without me—

DR. SELMAN: I’ve said that?

GEORGE: No, but haven’t I had that perception?

HILLY: Yes. You’ve said that a couple of times. I’ve thought frequently—but I just wasn’t brave enough to say it to you—that you were having those feelings because you can hear yourself talking, and it’s how you’ve started to perceive yourself.

DR. SELMAN: You’re referring to George?

HILLY: Yes!

DR. SELMAN: Yes, it does. I think the same thing.

GEORGE: What was that again?

HILLY: That sometimes you’ll hear what you’ve said—

DR. SELMAN: It’s called projection. You project onto me what you think yourself.

GEORGE: Riiiiight. Most of the time, the three of us are really getting along, it’s easy and it’s fun—but then there are these other moments where I can’t figure it out.

DR. SELMAN: Therapy is not fun. People talk about very painful topics.

GEORGE: I’m still wondering about your take on us.

DR. SELMAN: It’s a good relationship because you’ve been together for four years and I think you’re moving closer together. It’s not perfect, and it is what it is.

GEORGE: You don’t like Hilly more than me?

DR. SELMAN: She’s better-looking than you.

GEORGE: Is there anything else we were going to say to Dr. Selman?

HILLY: You wanted to talk about those dreams I had.

DR. SELMAN: Well, it’s been an hour. I don’t know if we have time to get into the dreams.

GEORGE: Can’t you just do the quick version?

DR. SELMAN: Let’s end it with the dream.

HILLY: Which one—the gay Mafia or the cat?

GEORGE: Either one.

HILLY: I was offered a scholarship to go to Poland to study violin and viola with a famous teacher; they promised me I’d be playing exclusive concerts all over Europe. But then I found out they were lying—they were drugging me with a needle in my hand. I became a zombie, and they were going to use me as a music slave. The Polish guy’s daughter was jealous of my hair, so she cut a big chunk of it off. My parents helped me escape from the evildoers. Then the dream took a big turn. It turned out that my friend Bubby was being offered the scholarship, and the gay Mafia was offering it to him. They wanted him to meet them at a hotel in Southampton, and he asked me to go with him for moral support. I fell asleep and I woke up and Bubby was gone and all of his luggage. I was terrified the gay Mafia had killed him. But then Bubby returned and said the gay Mafia kept his wallet, so he canceled all his credit cards. Then we decided to go get something to eat before the next meeting with them. We rode our bikes and we passed Paris Hilton, who was also riding a bike, but had pulled over to ask some pedestrians for directions. I asked Bubby to take me to the Palm in East Hampton for creamed spinach. We returned to the hotel, entered our room, only to find the gay Mafia rooting through all of our belongings. They were being led by Jeffrey Kalinsky, who was fairly civil with me. They even opened up my bottle of cranberry juice to test it, to make sure it wasn’t poison. They were doing lots of drugs. It was scary.

DR. SELMAN: I don’t think I’ve ever remembered a dream in that much detail.

GEORGE: I couldn’t believe it.

DR. SELMAN: I don’t know what it means.

HILLY: They say that Prozac makes you dream vividly, right? But I’ve been dreaming like that my whole life.

GEORGE: So do you think we have changed since you’ve known us? Is it better, or we’ve made a lateral kind of move?

DR. SELMAN: I will not pass judgment one way or another. I just don’t like doing that.

HILLY: Sorry if I hurt your feelings by saying all that stuff.

DR. SELMAN: It’s all right. When you’re in Rome, you know I would really appreciate it if you could go out to the Hotel Eden, make a left and head toward Via Veneto, go up the hill a little bit … it’s like a block away on the left side of the street. There’s a men’s shop that has these great scarves, and I’d love it if you’d get me one. One of these black cashmere scarves. I’ll pay you back. I think it’s 115 euros.

[ To be continued.]

—George Gurley

Prior Articles: George and Hilly published 01/23/06 George and Hilly published 01/16/06 George and Hilly published 12/26/05 George and Hilly published 11/14/05 George and Hilly published 11/07/05 George and Hilly published 10/24/05 George and Hilly published 10/17/05 George and Hilly published 10/10/05 George and Hilly published 10/03/05 George ’n’ Hilly, Back in Couples, Turn on the Doc published 09/26/05 But Should We Get Married? Part III published 08/29/05 But Should We Get Married? published 08/15/05 Should I Get Married? My Hilly Joining Me In Couples Session published 08/08/05

It was our fourth couple’s therapy session. Hilly and I weren’t so happy with the way the third one had gone …

DR. SELMAN: So what’s the latest?

GEORGE: I’ve decided that this time I’m not going to do all the talking, to let Hilly talk more.

HILLY: Uh-oh …. And we wanted to ask you if maybe you … if maybe you … if ….

GEORGE: You want me to say it?

HILLY: Uh-huh.

GEORGE: I am totally over it, but in the last session you seemed to be … I don’t know if you were scolding me, but maybe you were trying to get me to think more. I felt like you were giving me a hard time—maybe about being an exhibitionist. At first I was slightly annoyed, but I wonder if maybe this is part of what couples therapy is about: You get people to think not only during the session, but in between sessions. Is that your technique? I think at one point I said, “I feel like I’m in the principal’s office.”

DR. SELMAN: What do you think it was that made you think that it was like the principal’s office?

GEORGE: When I mentioned this report card that said I had “vile behavior at times,” and you gave me this look and were like, “Well, it seems like everything you’ve been talking about today sounds like vile behavior.” And it seemed a little harsh. I think I was talking too much about myself, but I was confused because you had said, “Talk about anything you want”—and then to get that reaction puzzled me. And then, when you were writing the diagnosis, I made some kind of joke, asking, “Are you going to write ‘provocative and depressed’?” And you kind of gave me this look like, “We’re not kidding around here.” Maybe I totally misinterpreted it and I’m paranoid ….

DR. SELMAN: Ha, ha, ha ….

GEORGE: … but I thought I would try not to talk so much this time. I would defer to Hilly.

DR. SELMAN: What do you think, Hilly?

HILLY: I thought at first that he was … I don’t know if “paranoid” is the right word, but maybe over-reacting? But then I realized something that would be helpful to us—I don’t know if it’s something you would consider—which is, in each session, sharing some thoughts about what you think we talked about, if we’ve progressed. And then—this might not be feasible, either—but leaving us with kind of a positive thought somehow? Something positive and happy.

DR. SELMAN: Why do you think you need something positive?

HILLY: Well, especially this week, there was a lot of talk about the previous session that was kind of negative.

DR. SELMAN: What exactly are you thinking of that was negative?

HILLY: That Georgie felt like you scolded him?

GEORGE: I was concerned, but I don’t feel that way now. But I would like to get your feedback on one thing. At one point I said, “Is there hope for redemption?” And you said, “This is not church.” And it was funny, and I respect that: This shouldn’t be some sort of feel-good thing, it should address serious matters. But I’m curious about your approach, your technique …. You know, what’s the philosophy of couples therapy and, you know, your style?

DR. SELMAN: People’s past experiences tend to color their present-day relationships. My recollection is that what we discussed last time was that there seemed to me to be some similarities in what you were saying to the events that had previously transpired in your life. And people do tend to repeat things over and over in their lives. And for me to point those out to you is potentially a helpful thing to do. At the same time, I’m trying to stay in the moment and be a therapist to you guys, and it’s like we have another person in the room with the newspaper.

GEORGE: O.K. …

DR. SELMAN: And I think that, because we’re always playing to this voice ….

GEORGE: Oh, so you think that maybe some of the things I’m bringing up, I think will be funny to read about?

DR. SELMAN: I really don’t know.

GEORGE: I think you’re part right. But I promise you that these are things that I’ve wondered about a lot; they happened 25, 30 years ago, and they’re still fresh in my mind. And this stuff that happened—is this normal? Or, you know—I’m kind of kidding, but … am I this demonic?

DR. SELMAN: You used the word “demonic.”

GEORGE: I’m hoping that you’ll say, “George, when you’re a little kid, that’s a pre-moral stage, and little kids do these kinds of things.” I’ve never talked about that stuff to a therapist.

DR. SELMAN: Well, I don’t mean to discourage your revelations, but maybe these are the kinds of things that would best be said in individual therapy. Because it’s not entirely clear how relevant this stuff is to what’s going on with your relationship with Hilly right now.

GEORGE: O.K., I’m ready talk about anything else.

DR. SELMAN: What do you think, Hil?

HILLY: Uh, I think I agree with that, too. Uh … sorry, I’m a little out of it. I’m not feeling very well today.

GEORGE: I’m kind of hung over; I was out reporting last night until 4 a.m.

HILLY: I just have a little cold or something. But I don’t really know what couples therapy is, either; so I didn’t think that, when George brought all that stuff up, it didn’t strike me as being so irrelevant.

GEORGE: I think we do want a diagnosis of what’s going on when things go awry in our relationship. But I think we also want, from you, some positive reinforcement. I think the first two sessions, we really felt like we were making progress ….

DR. SELMAN: Progress towards what, though?

GEORGE: Progress towards communication and feeling better about us.

HILLY: I just had a thought of some things I’d love for you to stop doing.

GEORGE: Go ahead.

HILLY: One is that you frequently criticize the fact that I use the word “like” too much—but when you do it, it’s as if you’re really making a moral judgment against me. And another one is, when I’m telling a story, he gets really, really irritated and interrupts: “ Just cut to the chase! What’s the punch line?” It’s that irritated tone … it’s almost frightening.

GEORGE: I’m sorry. No, you’re right.

HILLY: I can understand your irritation, but it’s your tone that I don’t like.

GEORGE: I think—yeah, it’s rude, and I just think that if you say “like” ….

HILLY: And then The New York Times —

GEORGE: Well, can I try addressing each one of these? I’m not making excuses, but sometimes when you’re talking, and you say the word “like” more than once in a sentence, I do feel like I should say something. Not to sound condescending, but I just think that’s for your own good! I mean, I do it, too—I say “like”—but I kind of tease you about that. But I know what you’re talking about. And then … what was the second one? Oh, I think that maybe that’s a male-female thing. Sometimes I don’t want to wait for a two-minute-long exposition. Often I want to hear the story, but it would seriously help if you first tell me what this is about exactly, where this is going, and then give me the details.

HILLY: Actually, I understand your annoyance a lot better now, because I’m seeing it in a different perspective, and I can think of a friend who does a similar thing, and it drives me insane.

GEORGE: Right, but it’s still rude of me. And the other thing is that your stories are, like nine times out of 10, good ones, and I’m always like, “Well, tell me more!” And the third thing was that I was telling you that The New York Times is a must-read, that you have to read The New York Times every day.

HILLY: Again, it’s that tone. Sometimes it’s in the middle of a movie or a walk—he gets this fact that I don’t regularly read The New York Times, and he gets so frustrated you can see his face almost turning red, and he’ll put his hands up in the air, and he’ll shut his eyes and clench his teeth.

GEORGE: I just think that—

HILLY: Get me a subscription if it’s that important!

GEORGE: You can read it online for free. The other thing is that you can afford a dollar a day. I don’t think it’s the be-all-end-all … I read it in the evening, because it kind of depresses me. I started that trend. I like the idea of us sitting around and, rather than watching movies, I’d like to hear you say, “Oh, did you read the piece in The Times?” That’s kind of a New York thing.

HILLY: What’s wrong with the Post?

GEORGE: Well, yes. Yeah.

HILLY: What’s wrong with The Observer?

GEORGE: Right. Right.

DR. SELMAN: Let me see if I can rephrase this: You’re complaining that George is critical and controlling?

HILLY: Mm-hmm.

DR. SELMAN: And maybe a little irritable sometimes?

HILLY: Exactly.

GEORGE: Am I really controlling?

HILLY: I think that he’s, uh …. Sorry, I feel like I’m in a fog or something.

DR. SELMAN: Did you take something?

HILLY: No … I took Super Blue Green algae, omega-three fatty fish oils and a Z-Bec.

GEORGE: Want a Diet Coke?

HILLY: No, I’ve already had two Diet Cokes.

GEORGE: Be honest. Do you really think that I’m really extra over-the-top controlling?

HILLY: You’re pretty controlling.

GEORGE: On a scale of 1 to 10?

HILLY: Eight.

GEORGE: Wow.

DR. SELMAN: You had no awareness of that?

GEORGE: No, I knew it.

HILLY: But I like to be given a good amount of direction!

DR. SELMAN: Why is that, Hilly?

HILLY: I find it hard to make decisions sometimes—for example, what to order for dinner. And also, what do you want? And that really makes me irritated, because he doesn’t want what he wants; he wants to know what I want, but I actually don’t care that much. If I had a specific desire, I would voice it. But I’m usually pretty easygoing about that stuff.

GEORGE: Yes … and not to try to defend myself, but sometimes, don’t I say, “Are you sure? Is this what you wanna do?”

HILLY: Yes, and that’s very sweet.

GEORGE: But in certain situations, I can be pretty ridiculously controlling … right?

HILLY: “Only one person in the kitchen at a time!”

GEORGE: Yes.

DR. SELMAN: “Read The New York Times at night—it’s depressing!”

HILLY: Uh-huh.

DR. SELMAN: “You can read it online … you can afford the dollar!”

GEORGE: What you don’t understand, if I’m in the kitchen and she starts to walk in, I go “ No, no, no, no!”—real cute. What are some other ones like that?

HILLY: “Go pet Bobbie. Go brush Bobbie. Go pick Bobbie up.’ No matter what I’m doing—if I’m in the kitchen washing dishes, if I’m looking out the window—I have to stop and pick up Bobbie. Which is fun, but ….

GEORGE: Are there other ones?

HILLY: Sometimes George will call and, if he can’t find me, sometimes he’ll leave a million messages saying, “Where ARE YOU?” That’s usually when you’re hung over.

DR. SELMAN: You said that you feel “a little bit hung over” today?

GEORGE: A little bit. I was interviewing someone until about 1 a.m., then I kept going for another three hours—and, actually, I feel kind of proud of myself that it wasn’t later.

DR. SELMAN: The implication is that the later you’re out, the more you drink?

GEORGE: Yes. And to me, it’s a big difference—getting home at 4, I deserve a lot more pats on the back than if I’d gotten home at 5:30 a.m. I think my goal should be to try to get home at 1 a.m. That would be great. And now I’m getting ready to go out of town for a story—a lot of decadent nightlife coverage.

HILLY: Where they stay out until 7 a.m. doing Ecstasy and cocaine. So I can’t imagine how you’re going to do that. I mean, I think it’ll be fun ….

GEORGE: I just have to be really professional—not get carried away.

DR. SELMAN: Does everybody have to drink while they’re there?

GEORGE: I don’t think I could do it completely sober; I’m gonna try to just drink beers.

DR. SELMAN: You’re going by yourself?

GEORGE: Yes. It should be really fun. I’m worried about the whole thing—I don’t really like to fly.

HILLY: I’m going to miss you when you’re gone! It would be nice if you called me more frequently when you’re gone. ’Cause usually, when he goes away for long periods of time, he doesn’t call me very much. But he’s going to be really busy.

DR. SELMAN: How long are you going for?

GEORGE: About 10 days.

DR. SELMAN: Too bad you couldn’t go along.

HILLY: I know, it would’ve been fun. But that’s O.K.—I just took a vacation.

DR. SELMAN: With or without?

HILLY: George? Without. I invited him, but he didn’t come.

DR. SELMAN: Do you ever go anywhere together?

HILLY: Mm-hmm! We went to Palm Beach last spring. That was the first time we took an airplane together … ’cause George has a fear of flying? Then we went to Kansas City this summer. And we go to East Hampton a lot. We had a great time in Kansas City. George met my parents once, though, two Christmases ago: He drove home to Kansas City because he was afraid of flying, then on his way back he drove through Cincinnati and met my parents. But then there was that time you didn’t meet my grandfather.

GEORGE: Right. Right.

HILLY: My grandfather came to New York, and he’s had about five strokes since then. I just thought they’d really like each other. He’s such an amazing guy … he’s so brilliant.

GEORGE: Sorry.

DR. SELMAN: So where do you think this is all headed?

GEORGE: You’ve asked us that before. Right?

[to be continued]

It was our fourth couple’s therapy session. Hilly and I weren’t so happy with the way the third one had gone …

DR. SELMAN: So what’s the latest?

GEORGE: I’ve decided that this time I’m not going to do all the talking, to let Hilly talk more.

HILLY: Uh-oh …. And we wanted to ask you if maybe you … if maybe you … if ….

GEORGE: You want me to say it?

HILLY: Uh-huh.

GEORGE: I am totally over it, but in the last session you seemed to be … I don’t know if you were scolding me, but maybe you were trying to get me to think more. I felt like you were giving me a hard time—maybe about being an exhibitionist. At first I was slightly annoyed, but I wonder if maybe this is part of what couples therapy is about: You get people to think not only during the session, but in between sessions. Is that your technique? I think at one point I said, “I feel like I’m in the principal’s office.”

DR. SELMAN: What do you think it was that made you think that it was like the principal’s office?

GEORGE: When I mentioned this report card that said I had “vile behavior at times,” and you gave me this look and were like, “Well, it seems like everything you’ve been talking about today sounds like vile behavior.” And it seemed a little harsh. I think I was talking too much about myself, but I was confused because you had said, “Talk about anything you want”—and then to get that reaction puzzled me. And then, when you were writing the diagnosis, I made some kind of joke, asking, “Are you going to write ‘provocative and depressed’?” And you kind of gave me this look like, “We’re not kidding around here.” Maybe I totally misinterpreted it and I’m paranoid ….

DR. SELMAN: Ha, ha, ha ….

GEORGE: … but I thought I would try not to talk so much this time. I would defer to Hilly.

DR. SELMAN: What do you think, Hilly?

HILLY: I thought at first that he was … I don’t know if “paranoid” is the right word, but maybe over-reacting? But then I realized something that would be helpful to us—I don’t know if it’s something you would consider—which is, in each session, sharing some thoughts about what you think we talked about, if we’ve progressed. And then—this might not be feasible, either—but leaving us with kind of a positive thought somehow? Something positive and happy.

DR. SELMAN: Why do you think you need something positive?

HILLY: Well, especially this week, there was a lot of talk about the previous session that was kind of negative.

DR. SELMAN: What exactly are you thinking of that was negative?

HILLY: That Georgie felt like you scolded him?

GEORGE: I was concerned, but I don’t feel that way now. But I would like to get your feedback on one thing. At one point I said, “Is there hope for redemption?” And you said, “This is not church.” And it was funny, and I respect that: This shouldn’t be some sort of feel-good thing, it should address serious matters. But I’m curious about your approach, your technique …. You know, what’s the philosophy of couples therapy and, you know, your style?

DR. SELMAN: People’s past experiences tend to color their present-day relationships. My recollection is that what we discussed last time was that there seemed to me to be some similarities in what you were saying to the events that had previously transpired in your life. And people do tend to repeat things over and over in their lives. And for me to point those out to you is potentially a helpful thing to do. At the same time, I’m trying to stay in the moment and be a therapist to you guys, and it’s like we have another person in the room with the newspaper.

GEORGE: O.K. …

DR. SELMAN: And I think that, because we’re always playing to this voice ….

GEORGE: Oh, so you think that maybe some of the things I’m bringing up, I think will be funny to read about?

DR. SELMAN: I really don’t know.

GEORGE: I think you’re part right. But I promise you that these are things that I’ve wondered about a lot; they happened 25, 30 years ago, and they’re still fresh in my mind. And this stuff that happened—is this normal? Or, you know—I’m kind of kidding, but … am I this demonic?

DR. SELMAN: You used the word “demonic.”

GEORGE: I’m hoping that you’ll say, “George, when you’re a little kid, that’s a pre-moral stage, and little kids do these kinds of things.” I’ve never talked about that stuff to a therapist.

DR. SELMAN: Well, I don’t mean to discourage your revelations, but maybe these are the kinds of things that would best be said in individual therapy. Because it’s not entirely clear how relevant this stuff is to what’s going on with your relationship with Hilly right now.

GEORGE: O.K., I’m ready talk about anything else.

DR. SELMAN: What do you think, Hil?

HILLY: Uh, I think I agree with that, too. Uh … sorry, I’m a little out of it. I’m not feeling very well today.

GEORGE: I’m kind of hung over; I was out reporting last night until 4 a.m.

HILLY: I just have a little cold or something. But I don’t really know what couples therapy is, either; so I didn’t think that, when George brought all that stuff up, it didn’t strike me as being so irrelevant.

GEORGE: I think we do want a diagnosis of what’s going on when things go awry in our relationship. But I think we also want, from you, some positive reinforcement. I think the first two sessions, we really felt like we were making progress ….

DR. SELMAN: Progress towards what, though?

GEORGE: Progress towards communication and feeling better about us.

HILLY: I just had a thought of some things I’d love for you to stop doing.

GEORGE: Go ahead.

HILLY: One is that you frequently criticize the fact that I use the word “like” too much—but when you do it, it’s as if you’re really making a moral judgment against me. And another one is, when I’m telling a story, he gets really, really irritated and interrupts: “Just cut to the chase! What’s the punch line?” It’s that irritated tone … it’s almost frightening.

GEORGE: I’m sorry. No, you’re right.

HILLY: I can understand your irritation, but it’s your tone that I don’t like.

GEORGE: I think—yeah, it’s rude, and I just think that if you say “like” ….

HILLY: And then The New York Times —

GEORGE: Well, can I try addressing each one of these? I’m not making excuses, but sometimes when you’re talking, and you say the word “like” more than once in a sentence, I do feel like I should say something. Not to sound condescending, but I just think that’s for your own good! I mean, I do it, too—I say “like”—but I kind of tease you about that. But I know what you’re talking about. And then … what was the second one? Oh, I think that maybe that’s a male-female thing. Sometimes I don’t want to wait for a two-minute-long exposition. Often I want to hear the story, but it would seriously help if you first tell me what this is about exactly, where this is going, and then give me the details.

HILLY: Actually, I understand your annoyance a lot better now, because I’m seeing it in a different perspective, and I can think of a friend who does a similar thing, and it drives me insane.

GEORGE: Right, but it’s still rude of me. And the other thing is that your stories are, like nine times out of 10, good ones, and I’m always like, “Well, tell me more!” And the third thing was that I was telling you that The New York Times is a must-read, that you have to read The New York Times every day.

HILLY: Again, it’s that tone. Sometimes it’s in the middle of a movie or a walk—he gets this fact that I don’t regularly read The New York Times, and he gets so frustrated you can see his face almost turning red, and he’ll put his hands up in the air, and he’ll shut his eyes and clench his teeth.

GEORGE: I just think that—

HILLY: Get me a subscription if it’s that important!

GEORGE: You can read it online for free. The other thing is that you can afford a dollar a day. I don’t think it’s the be-all-end-all … I read it in the evening, because it kind of depresses me. I started that trend. I like the idea of us sitting around and, rather than watching movies, I’d like to hear you say, “Oh, did you read the piece in The Times?” That’s kind of a New York thing.

HILLY: What’s wrong with the Post?

GEORGE: Well, yes. Yeah.

HILLY: What’s wrong with The Observer?

GEORGE: Right. Right.

DR. SELMAN: Let me see if I can rephrase this: You’re complaining that George is critical and controlling?

HILLY: Mm-hmm.

DR. SELMAN: And maybe a little irritable sometimes?

HILLY: Exactly.

GEORGE: Am I really controlling?

HILLY: I think that he’s, uh …. Sorry, I feel like I’m in a fog or something.

DR. SELMAN: Did you take something?

HILLY: No … I took Super Blue Green algae, omega-three fatty fish oils and a Z-Bec.

GEORGE: Want a Diet Coke?

HILLY: No, I’ve already had two Diet Cokes.

GEORGE: Be honest. Do you really think that I’m really extra over-the-top controlling?

HILLY: You’re pretty controlling.

GEORGE: On a scale of 1 to 10?

HILLY: Eight.

GEORGE: Wow.

DR. SELMAN: You had no awareness of that?

GEORGE: No, I knew it.

HILLY: But I like to be given a good amount of direction!

DR. SELMAN: Why is that, Hilly?

HILLY: I find it hard to make decisions sometimes—for example, what to order for dinner. And also, what do you want? And that really makes me irritated, because he doesn’t want what he wants; he wants to know what I want, but I actually don’t care that much. If I had a specific desire, I would voice it. But I’m usually pretty easygoing about that stuff.

GEORGE: Yes … and not to try to defend myself, but sometimes, don’t I say, “Are you sure? Is this what you wanna do?”

HILLY: Yes, and that’s very sweet.

GEORGE: But in certain situations, I can be pretty ridiculously controlling … right?

HILLY: “Only one person in the kitchen at a time!”

GEORGE: Yes.

DR. SELMAN: “Read The New York Times at night—it’s depressing!”

HILLY: Uh-huh.

DR. SELMAN: “You can read it online … you can afford the dollar!”

GEORGE: What you don’t understand, if I’m in the kitchen and she starts to walk in, I go “No, no, no, no!”—real cute. What are some other ones like that?

HILLY: “Go pet Bobbie. Go brush Bobbie. Go pick Bobbie up.’ No matter what I’m doing—if I’m in the kitchen washing dishes, if I’m looking out the window—I have to stop and pick up Bobbie. Which is fun, but ….

GEORGE: Are there other ones?

HILLY: Sometimes George will call and, if he can’t find me, sometimes he’ll leave a million messages saying, “Where ARE YOU?” That’s usually when you’re hung over.

DR. SELMAN: You said that you feel “a little bit hung over” today?

GEORGE: A little bit. I was interviewing someone until about 1 a.m., then I kept going for another three hours—and, actually, I feel kind of proud of myself that it wasn’t later.

DR. SELMAN: The implication is that the later you’re out, the more you drink?

GEORGE: Yes. And to me, it’s a big difference—getting home at 4, I deserve a lot more pats on the back than if I’d gotten home at 5:30 a.m. I think my goal should be to try to get home at 1 a.m. That would be great. And now I’m getting ready to go out of town for a story—a lot of decadent nightlife coverage.

HILLY: Where they stay out until 7 a.m. doing Ecstasy and cocaine. So I can’t imagine how you’re going to do that. I mean, I think it’ll be fun ….

GEORGE: I just have to be really professional—not get carried away.

DR. SELMAN: Does everybody have to drink while they’re there?

GEORGE: I don’t think I could do it completely sober; I’m gonna try to just drink beers.

DR. SELMAN: You’re going by yourself?

GEORGE: Yes. It should be really fun. I’m worried about the whole thing—I don’t really like to fly.

HILLY: I’m going to miss you when you’re gone! It would be nice if you called me more frequently when you’re gone. ’Cause usually, when he goes away for long periods of time, he doesn’t call me very much. But he’s going to be really busy.

DR. SELMAN: How long are you going for?

GEORGE: About 10 days.

DR. SELMAN: Too bad you couldn’t go along.

HILLY: I know, it would’ve been fun. But that’s O.K.—I just took a vacation.

DR. SELMAN: With or without?

HILLY: George? Without. I invited him, but he didn’t come.

DR. SELMAN: Do you ever go anywhere together?

HILLY: Mm-hmm! We went to Palm Beach last spring. That was the first time we took an airplane together … ’cause George has a fear of flying? Then we went to Kansas City this summer. And we go to East Hampton a lot. We had a great time in Kansas City. George met my parents once, though, two Christmases ago: He drove home to Kansas City because he was afraid of flying, then on his way back he drove through Cincinnati and met my parents. But then there was that time you didn’t meet my grandfather.

GEORGE: Right. Right.

HILLY: My grandfather came to New York, and he’s had about five strokes since then. I just thought they’d really like each other. He’s such an amazing guy … he’s so brilliant.

GEORGE: Sorry.

DR. SELMAN: So where do you think this is all headed?

GEORGE: You’ve asked us that before. Right?

[to be continued]

"I've been here probably 600 zillion times," said Nadia Newman, 22, a billowy Brooklynite who was enjoying a moist chocolate treat. "It's so soft, it's absolutely fluffy," she said, without a trace of remorse. She said she was a singer and that her record label had told her to lose weight, but she was unable to break her weekly Magnolia habit. For her it began late one evening after she noticed a trail of grown adults carrying cupcakes in the West Village and followed them to the shop. "It's a scene," she said. "It's a real hangout."

"I come here at least three times a week. At least ," said Janelle Yater, 28, who lives on Cornelia Street and works in sales. "I come here by myself alone at night." She proclaimed the cupcakes "fulfillment."

She's not alone. The steely, anorexic ambition that consumed this city for the better part of the last century is taking a snack break. And we're not talking Veggie Booty, folks. Think big, gooey melted chocolate cookies from City Bakery; pints of real Ben & Jerry's (no more frozen yogurt!); huge slabs of coconut cake at Bubby's. Take a look around: New York is fat as a house, and enjoying it.

The city's new layer of fat is not the apologetic fat of yore; it's a fat that pronounces itself. It's the fuck-you fat of James Gandolfini and Rosie O'Donnell and Alec Baldwin; the perky, focused fat of Hairspray sensation Marissa Jaret Winokur and gyrating television teen Kelly Osbourne; the born-again baby fat of pudgy pitcher David Wells; the horny bombshell fat of model Sophie Dahl and rock star Pink.

Call it survivor fat for impending God-knows-what, call it carpe diem , call it simple self-indulgence, but in any event, call the pizza parlor!

More evidence that socking away cupcakes and Skittles has replaced sex as New Yorkers' favorite vice: The New York Times is covering food as if it were a war , adding unapologetically plump-armed British "domestic goddess" Nigella Lawson and Random House editor at large Jason Epstein to an already bulging roster. Mr. Epstein said that he was approached by the Times after Sept. 11, given carte blanche, and found himself inspired by culinary writer M.F.K. Fisher. "She wrote about food and love when Europe was collapsing in the 30's," he said. "Hitler was taking over, the fascists were killing people, and she wrote about sitting down to eat."

At the Magnolia Bakery, three men in their 30's-who, in another era, might have been lining up to enlist-were sitting down to stuff their faces with milk and cake at a small iron table. Behind the counter, an employee was spreading thick, yellow icing on a fat, round cake while another slid a hunk of white-chocolate macadamia-nut cheese cake into a customer's waiting hand and grooved to the music, Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life."

"This is all fattening," said Barbara DiNicola, Magnolia's manager. "All flour, whole eggs, butter and sugar." She said the place was churning out thousands and thousands of cupcakes daily; six years ago, it was hundreds. "People think this place is a nightclub, because of the crowds outside," Ms. DiNicola said. Down the street, a new bakery, Polka Dot Cake Studio, recently opened, perhaps to siphon off those who can't wait half an hour for one of Magnolia's sugar bombs.

The West Village is hardly the only neighborhood with an expanding waistline. At the City Bakery on 18th Street, owner and head chef Maury Rubin said cookie sales have gone up in the last six months.

"Our highest seller is cookies and cookies and cookies ," he said. "We sell a monumental number of cookies every day. I won't disclose the exact number, but it's in the 'beyond several hundred' category. Chocolate chip is the most popular, of course. People are enjoying all kinds of foods that are otherwise under the-in my mind, idiotic-category of 'sinful.'"

"Anorexia's so out," said a City Bakery customer named Skye Stuart. "That was so three years ago. Nowadays, women, especially, are just like, 'Fuck you, I'm eating whatever I want, and if you don't like it, I'll find somebody who will.'"

On a recent afternoon at Dylan's Candy Bar, the regressive bonbon emporium on 60th Street and Third Avenue owned by Ralph Lauren's daughter, a 24-year-old production assistant named Heather Ward had dropped in, as she does regularly, to indulge what she called her "little sugar addiction." She usually gets the Rice Krispies treats but was eyeing a tray of chocolate-covered graham crackers. "These look good," she said.

Dylan's Candy salespeople said that the busiest hours were not in the afternoon after school, when parents help kids choose their gummy bears, but in the evening right before closing. The customers then are adults, and they're buying for themselves. "They're even more wild than the kids," said Jaclyn Ayala. "They're beasts sometimes."

Her colleague, Nilsa Mena, was wearing a turquoise T-shirt that hugged her curves. She said she'd gained 20 pounds-"and counting"-in her six months at the store. "I'm gonna eat my burgers and my candy and I don't care if I weigh 280 pounds," she said. "The meaning of life is to enjoy it, and I'm gonna enjoy it."

Gourmet magazine editor in chief and former New York Times restaurant critic Ruth Reichl has noticed that New Yorkers are eating more heartily. "It's about time!" she said. "I certainly think that in the wake of Sept. 11 people started feeling vulnerable and as if they should enjoy themselves as much as possible. Life started feeling very precious. So they started giving themselves permission and silencing that little voice that says, 'Don't eat that.' People started living their lives with more gusto."

"We all have a natural body type and part of the whole diet craziness is to be something that we're not," said Ms. Reichl. "So this is saying, 'Relax, be the body type that you are, you can eat normally.' And people did relax. And the consequences really weren't so horrible. If you enjoyed your food, you weren't going to blow up. You can relax and enjoy your food and you don't have to feel guilty about it, it doesn't mean you have to gain a million pounds."

Kurt Gutenbrunner, the chef at Wallsé, the Austrian place on West 11th Street, agreed. "For the longest time we overdid it with the wild arugula salad and the Diet Coke," he said. "Slowly we realized it doesn't work, we can't survive on wild arugula salad and Diet Coke. If I put goulash on the menu, it flies out of the restaurant. If I took off the spätzle, there would be a mini-revolution."

At Bubby's in Tribeca, manager Vincent Barile said, "'Save room for pie!' is our motto here. Now people are eating more and saving room for pie. There's no more 'I can't have this' and 'I shouldn't order that.' You just don't hear it anymore. Now we see a lot more 'healthy' customers than before, if you know what I mean. This place was a mini-California before. Now Ben Affleck orders the famous Frog Parker Pulled Pork sandwich. J. Lo orders to-go a lot-she like the barbecue chicken."

And how does Zagat favorite Danny Meyer (owner of Union Square Cafe, Gramercy Tavern, Tabla, Eleven Madison Park, etc.) weigh in?

"I can verify that people are less afraid of looking like a protagonist in a Rubens painting," he said. "When we recently opened Blue Smoke for lunch, with no fanfare, I frankly thought no one would eat barbecue for lunch. But today there were tons of people gorging on barbecue, ribs and sticky toffee pudding. They're washing those ribs down with-when it's not beer or bourbon, it's typically a root-beer float. I'm noticing more voracious consumption also at Eleven Madison Park in the past few months. At dinner time, we cannot keep up with chocolate soufflés, and those are chocolate soufflés for two . We can't keep them in the house. Our most popular entrée is the côte de boeuf, a roast beef for two. It comes with potato gratin.

"If I think back to 10 years ago, when I first got into the restaurant business, I notice that now people are more active," he said. "I think people feel more comfortable with themselves and their bodies and food is something you can indulge in more when you're exercising."

Eddie Pugsley, the manager of Smith & Wollensky steak house, said business is up. After Sept. 11, he said, "we were contemplating closing. But now steaks are being eaten at numbers that we didn't think would be possible only 12 months after. Smiles are on the customers' faces."

Bill Yosses is the pastry chef at Citarella in midtown.

"Now, when people indulge, they will go for rich desserts, but they have to be high quality," he said. "If that's the case, they're ready to dive in. There's more joie de vivre about eating, a European sense of enjoying life to the fullest and eating well. I started a 12-bean vanilla ice cream, whereas most ice creams are only one or two bean. We serve as many desserts as we do main courses here. At this time of year we have a new Concord grape dessert with a cheese-cake soufflé.

"There's definitely been a priority change," he added. "That bony look was never attractive. There's definitely a fuller look today. People are getting over the food phobias of the past. Crazy diets are not in."

Cheryl Sleade, the pastry chef at Bouley, agreed.

"I know in my own personal life I notice a difference," she said. "I think people are eating things they feel more enjoyment for. People come in specifically to try the desserts. I'm in a little bit of a food rut personally, because I'm eating a lot of comfort food and not a lot of variety. Right now I eat more what I enjoy. Soon after Sept. 11 my friends and I were laughing about how all of us were eating really hearty food. One person said it was Freudian, in that it means you are ready to take in the world and so you eat more. He had remembered studying that. When everything is bizarre and horrible and then when you're ready to accept these events, you eat. I remember all of us commenting that we had such appetites."

"Everybody orders desserts at our restaurant," she added. "They not only get a dessert, they get a dessert soup first."