Sex and the City (24 page)

You know Jack—everybody knows Jack. I've been married for three years. I've known Jack for ten. The other day I'm thinking, In all the time I've known Jack, he's never had a girlfriend for more than six weeks. So we all go to a Thanksgiving dinner at some friends'.

Everyone at the dinner has known each other for years. Okay, not everyone's married, but they're at least in serious relationships. Then Jack shows up, once again, with a bimbo. Twenty-something.

Blond. Turns out, sure enough, she's a waitress he met the week before. So, one, she's a stranger, doesn't fit in, and changes the whole tenor of the dinner. And he's useless, too, because all he's tliinking about is how he's going to get laid. Any time anyone sees Jack, it's this same scenario. Why spend time with him? After Thanksgiving, the women in our group all decided that Jack was out.

He was banned."

Samantha Jones was having dinner at Kiosk with Magda, the novelist. They were discussing bachelors—Jack and Harry in particular.

"Someone said that Jack is still talking about who he scored with," said Magda. "It's the same conversation he was having fifteen years ago. Men think that a bad reputation is something that only women can get. They're wrong. Don't these guys understand that when you see who they want to be with—a bimbo—that you don't want to be with a man who wants to be with that?"

"Take a guy hke Harry," Samantha said. "I can sort of understand Jack—he's totally into his career and making big money. But Harry doesn't want that. He says he doesn't care about power and money.

On the other hand, he doesn't care about love and relationships, either. So exactly what is he about? What is the point of his existence?"

"Besides," said Magda, "who knows where these guys' dirty dicks have been."

"I couldn't find it less interesting," said Samantha.

"I ran into Roger the other day, outside Mortimers, of course,"

Magda said.

"He must be fifty now," Samantha said.

"Close to it. You know, I dated him when I was twenty-five.

He'd just been named one of New York's most eligible bachelors by
Town & Country.
I remember thinking, It's all such a crock! First of all, he hved with his mother—okay, he did have the top floor of their town house, but still. Then there was the perfect house in Southampton and the perfect house in Palm Beach and the membership at the Bath & Tennis. And you know what? That was it. That was his life. Playing this role of eligible bachelor. And there wasn't anything below the surface."

"What's he doing now?" Samantha asked.

"The usual," Magda said. "He went through all the girls in New York, and when they finally got his number, he moved to L.A.

From there, to London, now Paris. He said he was back in New York for two months, spending time with his mother."

The two women screamed with laughter.

"Get this," Magda said. "He tells me a story. T really hke French file://D:\Bushnell, Candace - Sex and the City.htm 2008.09.06.

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girls,' he says. He goes to dinner at the home of this big shot Frenchman with three daughters. T'd take any of

them,' he says. He's at dinner, he thinks he's doing pretty well, he tells them about his friend, some Arab prince, who has three wives, all of them sisters. The French girls start glaring at him, and the dinner ends almost immediately."

"Do you think these guys get it? Do you think they realize how pathetic they are?" Samantha asked.

"Nope," Magda said.

"I SUFFER"

The next day, Simon Piperstock made several calls from the first-class lounge at Kennedy International Airport. One of them was to a young woman he'd dated several years ago.

"I'm on my way to Seattle," Simon said. "I'm not good."

"Really." The woman sounded almost happy about it.

"For some reason, everybody is telling me that my behavior is reprehensible. They say it's disgusting."

"Do you think it's disgusting?"

"A little bit."

"I see."

"My relationship with Mary isn't working out, so I took a beautiful young girl, a friend of mine, to this party. She's a nice girl.

And she's a friend. And everybody was on my case about it."

"Your relationships never work out, Simon."

"Then I ran into a woman at the theater who I'd been fixed up with a couple of years ago. And I wasn't really interested in her, so we became friends. She came up to me and she said, 'You know, I would never want to get involved with you. I would never want any of my friends to be involved with you. You've hurt too many women.'"

"You have."

"What am I supposed to do? I suffer from the problem of never thinking that I've met the right person. So I take people out. Jeez.

Everybody's done it." There was a pause. "I was sick yesterday,"

Simon said.

"That's too bad," the woman said. "Did you wish you had someone to take care of you?"

"Not really," Simon said. "I mean, I was only sick for a httle bit.

. . . Damn it. Yes. It's true. I did think about it. Do you think I have a problem? I'd hke to see you. Talk about it. Maybe you can help me."

"I have a serious boyfriend now," the woman said. "I think maybe we're going to get married. Frankly, I don't think he'd appreciate it if I was seen out with you."

"Oh," Simon said. "Okay."

"But if you want to call, feel free."

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Bone and the White Mink:

Carrie's Christmas Carol

Christmas season in New York. The parties. The star on
57th
Street. The tree. Most of the time, it's never the way it should be.

But once in a while, something happens and it works.

Carrie was at Rockefeller Center, thinking about ghosts of Christmas Past. How many years ago was it, she thought, putting on her skates, that I was last here? Her fingers trembled a little as she wrapped the laces around the hooks. Anticipation. Hoping the ice would be hard and clear.

Samantha Jones made her remember. Lately, Sam had been complaining about not having a boyfriend. About not having a love during the holidays for years and years. "You're lucky now," she told Carrie, and they both knew it was true. "I wonder if it will ever happen to me," Sam said. And both of them knew what "it" was. "I walk by Christmas trees, and I feel sad," said Sam.

Sam walks by Christmas trees and Carrie skates. And she remembers.

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★ ★ ★

It was Skipper Johnson's second Christmas in New York, and he was driving everyone crazy. One night, he went to three cocktail parties in a row.

At the first one, he saw James, a makeup artist. James was at the second and third cocktail parties, too, and Skipper talked to him. He couldn't help talking to everyone. Remy, a hairstylist, came up to Skipper and asked, "What are you doing with that guy, James?

You're too good for him.''

"What do you mean?" Skipper said.

"I've seen the two of you everywhere together. And let me tell you something. He's scum. A user. You can do better." "But I'm not gay," Skipper said. "Oh, sure, darling."

The next morning, Skipper called up Stanford Blatch, the screenwriter. "People thinking I'm gay, it's bad for my reputation,"

he said.

"Please," said Stanford. "Reputations are like cat htter. They can be changed daily. In fact, they should be. Besides, I've got enough of my own problems right now."

Skipper called up Fiver Wilde, the famous novelist. "I want to see-e-e you," he said.

"You can't," said River.

"Why not?"

"Because I'm busy."

"Busy with what?"

"With Mark. My new boyfriend."

"I don't get it," Skipper said. "I thought I was your friend." "He does things for me that you won't do." There was a pause.

"But I do things for you that he can't do," Skipper said. "Like what?" Another pause.

"That doesn't mean you have to be with him all the time," said Skipper.

"Don't you get it, Skipper?" River said. "He's here. His things are here. His underwear. His CDs. His hairballs." "Hairballs?" "He has a cat."

"Oh," Skipper said. Then: "You let a cat in your apartment?"

Skipper called up Carrie. "I can't stand it. It's Christmas, and everybody is in a relationship. Everybody except me. What are you doing tonight?"

"Big and I are staying home," Carrie said. "I'm cooking."

"I want a home," Skipper said. "I need a house. Maybe in Connecticut. I want a nest."

"Skipper," Carrie said, "you're twenty-five years old."

"Why can't everything be the way it was last year, when nobody was in a relationship?" Skipper moaned. "Last night, I had the most amazing dream about Gae Garden," he said, referring to the famously frosty socialite in her mid-forties. "She's so-o-o beautiful.

And I had a dream that we were holding hands and we were so in love. And then I woke up, totally bummed because it wasn't true. It was just that feeling. Do you think you can ever have that feeling in real life?"

The year before, Skipper, Carrie, and River Wilde had all gone to Belle's Christmas party at her family's mansion in the country.

Skipper drove his Mercedes, and River sat in the back seat like a papal personage and made Skipper keep flipping radio stations until he found some music he could tolerate. Afterward, they went back file://D:\Bushnell, Candace - Sex and the City.htm 2008.09.06.

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to River's apartment, and River and Carrie were talking while Skipper complained about how his car was parked illegally. Then Skipper went to the window and looked out, and sure enough, his car was being towed. He started screaming, and Carrie and River told him to shut up and do a line or smoke a joint or at least have another drink. And they thought it was hysterical.

The next day, Stanford Blatch went with Skipper to get his car out of the pound. The car had a flat tire, and Stanford sat inside the car, reading the papers, while Skipper changed the tire.

THE BONE "I

need a favor," Stanford Blatch said.

He and Carrie were having their annual Christmas lunch, at Harry Cipriani. "I have to sell some paintings in the Sotheby's auction. I want you to sit in the audience and bid them up."

"Sure," Carrie said.

"Frankly, I'm broke," Stanford said. After he lost his investment in a rock band, Stanford's family had cut him off. Then he'd gone through all the money from his last screenplay. "I've been such a fool," he said.

And then there was the Bone. Stanford had been writing a screenplay for him and paying for the Bone to get acting lessons.

"Of course, he said he wasn't gay," Stanford said, "but I didn't beheve him. Nobody understands. I took care of that kid. He used to fall asleep at night while we were talking on the phone. With the phone cradled in his arms. I've never met anyone who was so vulnerable. So mixed up."

The week before, Stanford had asked the Bone if he wanted to go to the Costume Institute benefit at the Met. The Bone freaked out. "I told him it would be good for his career. He screamed at me," Stanford said. "Insisted that he wasn't gay. That I should leave him alone. Said he never wanted to talk to me again."

Stanford took a sip of his Bellini. "People thought I was secretly in love with him. I thought I wasn't.

"He beat me up once. I was in his apartment. We got into a fight.

I set up an audition for him with a director. He said he was too tired. That I should leave. I said, 'Let's talk about it.' He threw me against a wall, then he literally picked me

up and threw me down the stairs. Of course he lived in a cheap walkup. A beautiful boy like that. My shoulder hasn't worked right since."

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who are older than he is. Like Carrie's agent, and one of her editors at a magazine. Skipper has been putting his hand on their knees under the table at dinners all over town.

The night of the Costume Institute benefit, Carrie was getting her hair done and yelling at Skipper on the phone when Mr. Big came home. He had a big package under his arm. "What's that?" Carrie asked.

"It's a present for me," Mr. Big said.

He went into the bedroom and came out holding a white mink coat. "Merry Christmas."

"Skipper, I have to go," Carrie said.

It was just three years ago Christmas that Carrie had been living in a studio apartment where an old lady had died two months before.

Carrie had no money. A friend lent her a piece of foam for a bed.

All she had was a mink coat and a Louis Vuitton suitcase, both of which were stolen when the apartment was inevitably robbed. But until then, she slept on the piece of foam with the fur coat over her, and she still went out every night. People liked her, and nobody asked questions. One night, she was invited to yet another party at someone's grand Park Avenue apartment. She knew she didn't really fit in, and it was always tempting to stuff your face on the free food, but you couldn't do that. Instead, she met a man who had a name.