Sex and the City Read Free

hours discussing Barkley's paintings. "I could do this all day, every day," Barkley said. "This is so much better than sex."
    THE GREAT UN-PRETENDER
    "The only thing that's left is work," said Robert, forty-two, an editor. "You've got so much to do, who has time to be romantic?"
    Robert told a story, about how he'd recently been involved was clear that it wasn't going to work out. "She put me through all these little tests. Like I was supposed to call her on Wednesday to go out on Friday. But on Wednesday, maybe I feel like I want to kill myself, and God only knows how I'm going to feel on Friday. She wanted to be with someone who was crazy about her. I understand that. But I can't pretend to feel something I don't.
    "Of course, we're still really good friends," he added. "We see each other file://D:\Bushnell, Candace - Sex and the City.htm 2008.09.06.

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    all the time. We just don't have sex."

NARCISSUS AT THE FOUR SEASONS
    One Sunday night, I went to a charity benefit at the Four Seasons. The theme was Ode to Love. Each of the tables was named after a different famous couple—there were Tammy Faye and Jim Bakker, Narcissus and Himself, Catherine the Great and Her Horse, Michael Jackson and Friends. Al D'Amato sat at the Bill and Hillary table. Each table featured a centerpiece made up of related items—for instance, at the Tammy Faye Bakker table there were false eyelashes, blue eye shadow, and lipstick candles. Michael Jackson's table had a stuffed gorilla and Porcelana face cream.
    Bob Pittman was there. "Love's not over—smoking is over," Bob said, grinning, while his wife, Sandy, stood next to him, and I stood behind the indoor foliage, trying to sneak a cigarette. Sandy said she was about to climb a mountain in New Guinea and would be gone for several weeks.
    I went home alone, but right before I left, someone handed me the jawbone of a horse from the Catherine the Great table.
    LOVE AT THE BOWERY BAR: EPILOGUE
    Donovan Leitch got up from Francis Ford Coppola's table and came over. "Oh no," he said. "I totally believe that love conquers all. Sometimes you just have to give it some space." And that's exactly what's missing in Manhattan.

2
    Swingin' Sex? I
    Don't Think So . .
    It all started the way it always does: innocently enough. I was sitting in my apartment, having a sensible lunch of crackers and sardines, when I got a call from an acquaintance. A friend of his had just gone to Le Trapeze, a couples-only sex club, and was amazed. Blown away. There were people naked—
    having sex—right in front of him. Unlike S&M clubs, where no actual sex occurs, this was the real, juicy tomato. The guy's girlfriend was kind of freaked out—although, when another naked woman brushed against her, she
    "sort of liked it." According to him.
    In fact, the guy was so into the place that he didn't want me to write about it because he was afraid that, like most decent places in New York, it would be ruined by publicity.
    I started imagining all sorts of things: Beautiful young hardbody couples.
    Shy touching. Girls with long, wavy blond hair wearing wreaths made of grape leaves. Boys with perfect white teeth wearing loincloths made of grape file://D:\Bushnell, Candace - Sex and the City.htm 2008.09.06.

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    leaves. Me, wearing a super-short, over-one-shoulder, grape-leaf dress.
    We would walk in with our clothes on and walk out enlightened.
    The club's answering machine brought me back to reality with a thump.
    "At Le Trapeze, there are no strangers, only friends you haven't met yet,"
    said a voice of mdeterminate gender, which added that there was "a juice bar and a hot and cold buffet"—things I rarely associate with sex or nudity. In celebration of Thanksgiving, "Oriental Night" would be held on November 19.
    That sounded interesting, except it turned out that Oriental Night meant oriental food, not oriental people.
    I should have dropped the whole idea right then. I shouldn't have listened to the