Sex and the City (11 page)

And Bicycle Boys spurn those skintight bike pants that have cushy foam padding sewn into the butt. Bicycle Boys are not averse to the chastising pain of a hard bike seat—it helps the literature. "I don't own any spandex pants," said Mr. New Yorker, who added that he wears long Johns in the winter to keep warm.

Which may be one reason Bicycle Boys, more than their athletic cousins, tend to get physically attacked. The other reason is that they ride at any hour (the later the better— more romantic), in any physical condition, anywhere.

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tailspin," said Mr. Eccles. And worse.

One Halloween, Mr. New Yorker was wearing a British bobby's cape when he rode into a group of twelve year olds who yanked him off his bike. "I said, 'I can't fight all of you at once. I'll fight one of you.' They all stepped back, except for the biggest one. I suddenly realized I didn't want to fight him, either." The whole gang jumped on Mr. New Yorker and began pounding him, until some innocent bystanders started screaming and the gang ran away. "I was lucky,"

said Mr. New Yorker. "They didn't take my bike, but they did take some records I had in my basket." (Note that Mr. New Yorker was carrying "records," as in vinyl albums, not CDs— another sign of a true Bicycle Boy.)

Mr. Eccles recalled a similar story. "Two days ago, I was riding through Central Park at ten at night, when I was surrounded by a

'wilding' gang on rollerblades. "They were almost children. They tried to capture me in a flank maneuver, but I was able to bicycle away even faster."

But an even bigger danger is sex, as a reporter we'll call Chester found out. Chester doesn't ride his bike as much as he used to because, about a year ago, he had a bad cycling accident after a romantic interlude. He was writing a story on topless dancers when he struck up a friendship with Lola. Maybe Lola fancied herself a Marilyn Monroe to his Arthur Miller. Who knows. All Chester knows is that one evening she called him up and said she was lying around in her bed at Trump Palace, and could he come over. He hopped on his bike and was there in fifteen minutes. They went at it for three hours. Then she said he had to leave because she lived with someone and the guy was coming home. Any minute.

Chester ran out of the building and jumped on his bike, but there was a problem. His legs were so shaky from having sex they started cramping up just as he was going down Murray Hill, and he crashed over the curb and slid across the pavement. "It really hurt," he said.

"When your skin is scraped off like that, it's like a first-degree burn." Luckily, his nipple did eventually grow back.

"A
BIG STEEL THING BETWEEN
MY
LEGS"
Riding a bike in Manhattan is indeed perilous sport. If these writers lived out west, maybe they'd carry guns, like something out of Larry McMurtry or Tom McGuane or Cormac McCarthy. But since they live in New York, the Bicycle Boys are more the Clark Kent type.

Mild-mannered reporters by day who often have to answer to killer editrixes, they become menaces to society by night. And who can blame them? "You ride through red lights, you ride against the traffic. You can be a felon," said Chester. "I feel like there's a big steel thing between my legs throbbing ahead of me," said one Bicycle Boy, who asked to be unnamed. "I have my hand on my bike right now," said Kip, a literary agent, speaking on the phone from his office. "There's a freedom in being on your bike in the city. You feel like you're floating above the masses. I'm pretty fearless on my bike, in ways that I can't be in the rest of my life. I file://D:\Bushnell, Candace - Sex and the City.htm 2008.09.06.

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feel like I'm the best on my bike, the most in tune with myself and the city."

Bicycle boys are particular about their bikes—they don't usually ride souped-up, high-tech, mountain bikes. No Shimano XT

derailleurs or elastomer suspension forks for them. More typical is Mr. New Yorker, who rides a polite three-speed, with a basket in back and fenders. The bike should radiate nostalgia. "You have to have a basket for groceries," said Mr. New Yorker, "your computer and work stuff." "My bike is definitely like my dog and my baby,"

said Kip. "I kind of take care of it and preen it."

But often when Bicycle Boys talk about their bikes, it's hard not to think they are talking about women.

"I love my bike, and you can get attached to a bike," said one B.B., "but the truth is that one bike is very much like another."

"I had one bike that I went completely over the top with," said Kip. "It had an aluminum frame, and I hand-stripped it and polished it. Quite a bit. And then it got stolen. I was emotionally devastated.

I couldn't get over it until I got a

Like girlfriends, bikes are always getting stolen in New York. "If you go into a bookstore for ten minutes, you come out and your bike is gone," said Mr. Eccles. This, however, is not necessarily a problem, as Mr. New Yorker pointed out.

"The bike pays for itself in three months if you compare it to subway fare," he said. "One month, if you take taxis."

The bike can also be a useful prop when it comes to meeting women. "It's a good way to start a conversation," said Thad, a writer. "It's also something to fuss with to alleviate your self-consciousness."

And apparently it's a good way to tell whether or not you're going to get laid. "One time, a woman got mad at me when I proposed riding my bike to her house," said Thad. "On the other hand, if a woman says, 'Bring the bike inside,' it's very sexy."

"Whether or not a woman lets you bring your bike into her house is an indication of how well adjusted she is," said Mr. Eccles. "If she's anal-retentive, she won't want the bike anywhere near her stuff."

But sometimes a bike is not just a bike—and women seem to know this. "One is viewed as a suspicious character. You're too mobile and independent," said Mr. Eccles. "And certainly a bit undignified in the end."

"There is something Peter Pan—ish about it," said Kip. "That's part of the reason I don't take it everywhere anymore."

"It implies a certain selfishness," agreed Mr. Eccles. "You can't give anyone a lift. And there's a little too much freedom associated with a man who rides a bike." Mr. Eccles added that, being in his early fifties, there were about ten reasons why he wasn't married,

"none of them particularly good ones."

It can also imply a certain cheapness. One woman, an assistant editor at a glossy men's magazine, remembered a date she had with a Bicycle Boy she met at a book signing. After chatting her up, the Bicycle Boy made a date to meet her at

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late, on his bike (she was waiting outside, nervously smoking cigarettes), then, after they'd sat down and looked at the menu, he said, "Look, do you mind? I've just realized I'm really in the mood for pizza. You don't care, do you?" He stood up.

"But don't we have to . . . , " she said, glancing at the waiter. He grabbed her arm and hustled her out. "All you had were a few sips of water. I didn't even touch mine. They can't charge you for that."

They went back to her house and ate pizza, and then he made his move. They saw each other a few times after that, but every time, he wanted to come to her house at ten at night and eat takeout food.

She finally ditched him and went out with a banker.

Bicycle Boys often make the mistake of trying to turn their girlfriends into Bicycle Girls. Joanna, a woman who grew up on Fifth Avenue and now works as an interior designer, actually married a Bicycle Boy. "We both rode bikes," she said, "so at first it wasn't a problem. But I noticed something was kind of wrong when he gave me a bicycle seat for my birthday. Then, for Christmas, he gave me a bike rack to put on the car. When we got divorced, he took the bike rack back and kept it for himself. Can you believe that?"

"Boys on bikes? God, no," said Magda, the novelist. "Can you imagine what a stinky crotch they have? No, thank you. I've been mowed down too many times by men on bikes. They're all kamikaze selfish pricks. If they have sex the way they ride their bikes, thank you, but speed is not important."

"Women don't think riding a bike is sexy," said Thad. "They think it's infantile. But at some point, you decide that you can't go through life giving women a false impression of who you are."

Greenwich Gals

The pilgrimage to the newly suburbanized friend is one that most Manhattan women have made, and few truly enjoyed. In fact, most come back to the city in an emotional state somewhere between giddy and destroyed. Here follows one such tale.

Jolie Bernard used to be an agent who handled rock bands at International Creative Management. Five years ago, when she wasn't stomping the globe in her cowboy boots, hanging out with file://D:\Bushnell, Candace - Sex and the City.htm 2008.09.06.

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rock stars and sometimes sleeping with them, she hved in New York, in a one-bedroom apartment decorated with black leather couches and a giant stereo system. She had long blond hair and a tight little body with big tits, and when she came home she had a million messages on her answering machine, and when she went out, she had money and drugs in her purse. She was kind of famous.

And then something happened. No one thought it would, but it did, which just goes to show that you can never tell about these things. She turned thirty-five and she met this investment banker who worked for Salomon Brothers, and before you knew it, they were married, she was pregnant, and they were moving to Greenwich.

"Nothing will change," she said. "We'll still get together all the time and you can come to visit us and we'll have barbecues in the summer."

We all said, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Two years went by. We heard she'd had one rug rat, and then another. We could never remember their names or if they were boys or girls.

"Hey, how's Jolie?" I would ask Miranda, who was at one time Jolie's best friend.

"Dunno," Miranda would say. "Every time I call her, she can't talk. The sprinkler man is coming, or she caught the nanny smoking pot in the laundry room, or one of the kids is screaming."

"Horrible. Just horrible," we would say, and then we would forget about it.

And then, a month ago, the inevitable happened: Little white invitations bordered with tiny purple flowers arrived, summoning four of Jolie's city friends to a bridal shower she was hosting at her house. It was being held on a Saturday at one
P.M
.—only, as Miranda pointed out, the most inconvenient time and the last thing you want to be doing with your Saturday afternoon. Schlepping to Connecticut.

"Jolie called and begged me," Miranda said. "She said she wanted some of her city friends to come so it wouldn't be too boring."

"The kiss of death," I said.

Still, the four women did agree to go—Miranda, thirty-two, a cable exec; Sarah, thirty-eight, who ran her own PR company; Carrie, thirty-four, some sort of journalist; and Belle, thiry-four, a banker and the only married woman of the group.

OLD GREENWICH, NEW ENEMIES

Of course, Saturday was the most beautiful day of the year so far.

Sunny, seventy degrees. When they met up at Grand having to be stuck inside Jolie's house on the most beautiful day of the year, even though, being dyed-in-the-wool city dwellers, none of them ever went outside if they could possibly avoid it.

The trouble began on the train. As usual, Carrie had gone to bed at four in the morning, and she was terribly hung over and kept thinking she was going to puke. Belle got into an argument with the woman in front of her, whose kid kept sticking its head over the top file://D:\Bushnell, Candace - Sex and the City.htm 2008.09.06.

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of the seat and sticking his tongue out at her.

Then Sarah revealed that Jolie was in A. A.—had been for three months—which meant there might not be cocktails at the shower.

Carrie and Miranda immediately decided they would get off the train at the next stop and go back to the city, but Belle and Sarah wouldn't let them; and then Sarah told Carrie that she should probably join A. A. herself.

The train stopped in Old Greenwich, and the four women crammed into the back seat of a white and green cab.

"Why are we doing this?" Sarah asked.

"Because we have to," Carrie said.

"They just better not have any trendy gardening tools lying around," said Miranda. "If I see gardening tools, I'm going to scream."

"If I see kids, I'm going to scream."

"Look. Grass. Trees. Breathe in the aroma of freshly mown grass," said Carrie, who had mysteriously begun to feel better.

Everyone looked at her suspiciously.

The cab pulled up in front of a white, Colonial-style house whose value had obviously been increased by the addition of a pointy slate roof and balconies off the second floor. The lawn was very green, and the trees that dotted the yard had borders of pink flowers around their bases.