介绍:
TALKING DIRTY AT MORTIMERS
A couple of days later I was at a ladies' lunch at Mortimers. Once again, the
talk turned to sex and my experiences at the
"Didn't you love it?" asked Charlotte, the English journalist. "I'd love to go
to a place like that. Didn't it turn you on, watching all those people having
sex?"
"Nope," I said, stuffing my mouth with a corn fritter topped with salmon
eggs.
"Why not?"
"You couldn't really see anything," I explained. "And the
men?"
"That was the worst part," I said. "Half of them looked like shrinks. I'll
never be able to go to therapy again without imagining a bearded fat man
lying naked and glassy-eyed on a mat on the floor, getting an hour-long blow
job. And still not being able to come."
Yes, I told Charlotte, we did take our clothes off—but we wore towels. No,
we didn't have sex. No, I didn't get turned on, even when a tall, attractive,
dark-haired woman in her mid-thirties entered the rumpus room and caused
a stir. She exposed her bottom like a monkey, and within minutes, she was
lost in a tangle of arms and legs. It should have been sexy, but all I could think
about were those National Geo-graphic nature films of mating baboons.
The truth is, exhibitionism and voyeurism are not mainstream events. And
neither, for that matter, is S&M, despite what you may have recently read
elsewhere. The problem, in the clubs, anyway, always comes down to the
people. They're the actresses who can never find work; the failed opera
singers, painters, and writers; the lower-management men who will never get
to the middle. People who, should they corner you in a bar, will keep you
hostage with tales of their ex-spouses and their digestive troubles. They're
the people who can't negotiate the system. They're on the fringes, sexually and
in life. They're not necessarily the people with whom you want to share your
intimate fantasies.
Well, the people at Le Trapeze weren't all pale, pudgy sex zombies: Before
we left the club, Sam and I ran into the attention-grabbing tall woman and
her date in the locker
talkative: He was from Manhattan, he said, and had recently started his own
business. He and the woman had been colleagues, he said. As the woman
slipped into a yellow business suit, the man smiled and said, "She fulfilled
her fantasy tonight." The woman glared at him and stalked out of the locker
room.
A few days later, Sam called and I screamed at him. Then he asked, hadn't
the whole thing been my idea?
Then he asked, hadn't I learned anything?
And I said yes, I had. I told him I had learned that when it comes to sex,
there's no place like home.
But then you knew that, didn't you? Didn't you? Sam?
3
We Loved a Serial Dater
On a recent afternoon, seven women gathered in Manhattan, over wine,
cheese, and cigarettes, to animatedly discuss the one thing they had in
common: a man. Specifically, an Eligible Man of Manhattan, a man we'll call
"Tom Peri."
Tom Peri is forty-three years old, five feet, ten inches tall, with straight
brown hair. There is nothing remarkable about his appearance, save for a
penchant, a few years ago, for dressing in black Armani suits paired with
wacky suspenders. He comes from a wealthy manufacturing family and grew
up on Fifth Avenue and in Bedford, New York. He lives in a modern high-rise
on Fifth Avenue.
Over the last fifteen years, Peri, who is almost always referred to by his last
name only, has become something of a legend in New York. He's not exactly a
womanizer, because he's always trying to get married. Peri is, rather, one of
the city's most accomplished serial daters, engaging in up to twelve
"relationships" a year. But after two days or two months, the inevitable
happens. Something goes wrong, and, he says, "I get dumped."
For a certain type of woman—thirtyish, ambitious, well placed socially—
dating Peri, or avoiding his attentions, has become nothing less than a rite of
passage, sort of like your first limo ride and your first robbery, combined.
Even among the city's other notorious ladies' men, Peri stands out. For
one thing, he appears to be holding far fewer cards. He has neither the well-
bred good looks of Count Erik Wachtmeister nor the free-flowing cash of
Mort Zuckerman.
I wanted to know, What's Peri got?
Each of the women I contacted had been involved with Peri—either
intimately or as an object of his ardent affections— and each said she had
dumped him. None refused my request to get together for a session of
Talking about Peri. Each woman, perhaps, had something . . . unresolved
about Peri. Maybe they wanted him back. Maybe they wanted him dead.
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