“The problem is that sex doesn’t stay done,” said Sallie Ann. Her most recent conquest was a poet who was terrific in bed, but who, she said, “kept wanting me to go to dinner with him and go through all the chat bit.” He’d recently stopped calling: “He wanted to read me his poetry, and I wouldn’t let him.”
I asked if there was realistically any way to pull off this whole “women having sex like men” thing.
“You’ve got to be a real bitch,” said Sallie Ann. “Either that, or you’ve got to be incredibly sweet and nice. We fall through the cracks. It confuses men.”
“It’s too late for sweet,” Carrie said.
“Then I guess you’re just going to have to become a bitch,” Sarah said. “But there’s one thing you forgot.”
“What?”
“Falling in love.”
“I don’t think so,” Carrie said. She leaned back in her chair. She was wearing jeans and an old Yves St. Laurent jacket. She sat like a man, legs apart. “I’m going to do it—I’m going to become a real bitch.”
We looked her and laughed.
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
“You’re already a bitch.”
Meeting Mr. Big
As part of her research, Carrie went to see The Last Seduction at 3 in the afternoon. She had heard that the movie portrayed a woman who, in pursuit of money and hot sex and absolute control, uses and abuses every man she meets—and never has a regret or one of those expected “Oh my God, what have I done?” epiphanies.
Carrie never goes to movies—she had a WASPy mother who told her that only poor people with sick kids send their kids to the movie theater—so it was a big deal for her. She got to the theater late, and when the ticket taker told her the movie had already started, she said, “Fuck you. I’m here for research—you don’t think I’d actually go see this movie, do you?”
When she came out, she kept thinking about the scene where Linda Fiorentino picks up the man in the bar and has sex with him in the parking lot, gripping a chain-link fence.
Carrie bought two pairs of strappy sandals (there is sexual power in women’s shoes) and got her hair cut off.
On a Sunday evening, Carrie went to a cocktail party thrown by the designer Joop. Even though Carrie had to work the next day, she knew she’d go home too late. She doesn’t like to go home at night and doesn’t like to go to sleep.
