[Ed. note: originally published on June 26, 1995]
Bad things can happen to city women when they come back from visiting their newly-married-with-children friends in the suburbs. First, on the train back, one feels a yearning for those green yards, waxed Acuras and adorable children. Then, revulsion sets in, pure disgust at the lack of interesting people, artists, musicians. Instead, you get all those Stepford Wives, and their sniveling brats and fake wood paneling. Gimme shelter—in Bowery Bar.
But then you snap back to center: Maybe I do want that life, silver picture frames, tennis out back, iced tea. Then again, maybe I don’t. Damn. I’m 32, you think. Which means absolute confusion. Which can be dangerous.
On a recent morning after four of my 30-ish friends—Carrie, Miranda, Belle and Sarah—returned from a bridal shower in Greenwich, I got phone calls.
Sarah told me she had broken her ankle rollerblading at 4 in the morning. Miranda had sex with some guy in a closet at a party and they didn’t use condoms. Carrie had done something so ridiculous she was sure her short relationship with Mr. Big was over. And no one could find Belle.
The Bold Fellow
Miranda told me she hadn’t meant to go nuts at the party, to go into what she calls “my Glenn Close imitation.”
“I was just going to go home and get a good night’s sleep and wake up and work on Sunday.” That was the great thing about not being married, not having kids, being alone. You could work on Sunday.
But Sarah made her go to the party. “There could be good contacts there,” Sarah had said. Sarah, who had her own P.R. company, was constantly on the lookout for “contacts,” which could also translate to “dates.” The party was on East 64th Street. Some rich old guy’s town house. Women in their 30’s wearing black dresses and all with practically the same color blonde hair. That type of woman always went to parties at rich old guys’ houses and they always brought their girlfriends, so there were squadrons of these women looking for men and pretending not to.
Sarah disappeared into the throng. Miranda was left standing by the bar. She had dark, wavy hair and she wore leggings with the boot part sewn in, so she stuck out.
Two girls walked by her, and Miranda, maybe she is a little paranoid, swore that one of them said, “That’s that girl, Miranda Hobes. She’s a total bitch.”
So Miranda said, out loud, but so no one could hear, “That’s right, I am a real bitch, honey, but thank God I’m not like you.” Then she remembered how at the end of the long afternoon in the suburbs, the low-fat carrot cake with low-fat cream cheese frosting had been served with tiny sterling forks with prongs so sharp they could break the skin.
A man came up to her. Expensively tailored suit. O.K., he wasn’t exactly a man because he was only about 35. But he was trying. She was making the bartender give her a double vodka tonic, and the man said, “Thirsty, eh?”
“No. What I really want is a steak. O.K.?”
“I will get you one,” the man said, and it turned out he had a French accent.
“I’ll let you know,” she said, and tried to walk away. She didn’t want to have anything to do with the party. She was tired of feeling like she didn’t fit in, but she didn’t want to go home, either, because she was tired of being lonely and she was a little drunk.
“My name is Gilles,” he said. “I own a gallery on 79th Street.”
She sighed and said, “Of course you do.”
“Perhaps you have heard of it.”
“Listen Gilles…” she said.
Gilles smiled slyly. His dark eyes crunched up under his bushy black eyebrows. “Yes….”
“I suggest you go fuck yourself.”
