You're a Catch
but New York Magazine just declared that dating in New York has never been worse.
“I thought I didn’t have the attention span to read anymore, but I can read this.” –Wonhee Lee
This year I gave up sex for lent. I was happy to see Easter come and go.
I did not give it up because it felt hard– like giving up sugar, or Guinness, or tuna melts. It felt easy, like saying I wasn’t going to eat a peach in the middle of winter. It wasn’t the season. A good peach, supple and dripping and the color of the sunset halfway in its set would be a rare find. No matter how much I was craving it, manifesting it, scrolling through my phone, looking at the bounty of stone fruit, hot cobblers, tanned bodies, and the blue oceans of August, I knew I needed to focus on something else.
I was in line at my local butcher shop– a landmark Polish establishment with many hanging meats. As I inched my way forward in the queue, I overheard the guy ahead of me talking about donuts. Donuts? My ears perked up. I had always come for the kielbasa, smoked ham, pork, pickles, pierogis, pretty much anything savory, but never donuts.
“They’re in the window,” he said to me.
Plain sight. I had never noticed.
“It’s a big day in Poland,” he continued, “They make them for the holiday.”
I am, of course, both a bad Catholic and a bad Protestant, so I had no idea it was Fat Tuesday (or Pancake Tuesday as they call it in Ireland). This was the reason for the surplus in the window– raspberry, chocolate cream, rose, plum. The butcher’s wife told us that she’d already sold a few hundred. I looked at the price. $2.25 per donut. I told her to raise it. Then I ordered three.
The conversation turned to what we were giving up: sugar, alcohol, social media.
I thought it would give everyone a laugh if I said, “sex,” so I did.
It was a copout for a period of repentance that I rarely observe. And in the current dating landscape, not a hard ask.
The butcher’s wife laughed. The man did not. He said something about being married, paid the bill, and walked out the door. He’d been so warm and blue-eyed until I had mentioned sex.
But the sex I was having in this city? It was not leaving me hungry for more.
I passed this advertisement on Atlantic Avenue yesterday. Pretty much sums it up:
I feel we need to start a campaign: The Women of New York Are Not Satisfied.
Everywhere I turn, I am affirmed that I am not the only one feeling this way. I am faced with a plethora of media all focused on the fact that we have lost the art of sex, dating, and romance. Every book I open, every podcast, every YouTube video.
On the most recent Sunday Session of Call Her Daddy titled, “Make Dating Fun Again,” Alex Cooper tells her audience, a group of young women called the Daddy Gang, that everyone has lost the plot. Men and women are at an all time low of knowing how to approach each other. They lack basic social skills we once took for granted, like talking to someone in line at the coffee shop– someone you are not trying to bang.
We have let our social muscle wither.
Remember when people used to strike up conversations– on the bus, in the bar– with strangers? My friend’s dad was recently visiting from Cork and remarked on this. He chats everywhere with everyone all around NYC (pure Irish). With both a gorgeous and hard-to-discern accent, he gets away with it. On this trip, he commiserated with an older Puerto Rican man on the bus about how people do not do talk on the bus anymore. And it’s true, people look at you like you have five heads if you start talking to them in public. People are siloed, on their phones, uncomfortable to communicate.
Cooper begs the Daddy Gang to push themselves to recoup these skills.
As I listen, I can’t help thinking, Is this where we are? People needing to be reminded of our innate traits and tendencies which are the very thing that make us human? People needing to be reminded that dating is supposed to be fun?
I love dating. I love dating when the dates are good. I love dating when the dates are bad. But even I am fatigued.
On a good date, there is a kind man feeding me dim sum at 2pm on a Saturday, paying the bill, knowing exactly where to pivot afterward for the nearest, coldest beer. He is good at holding my lower back while walking down Canal Street and kissing me for an extended period of time at the subway entrance. This impresses me. Kissing on the street is delightful but something I have always felt uncoordinated and too proud to do as a native New Yorker. I am ingrained to get. out. of. the. fucking. way. He is a transplant. It works. He quickly follows up with a dinner reservation for next week.
On a bad date, the guy cries. We are having our second drink. It’s a set-up. A vibe-check. We barely text before meeting, but within half an hour, we have covered our biggest ambitions and what to matters us in life and love. We know yourselves well and are good at asking questions. But it feels more like an interview than a date. The longer we sit, the more he seems into it, the less I do, and the swifter his moves become. He starts touching my knee and talking about his mother (?!), a mix of two affections that are not mixing for me. When he asks if he can kiss me, I say, “no,” and he looks perplexed and sad. I feel the need to be polite but clear. I explain that I am just not feeling it. He’s lovely, we are aligned in many ways on paper, but there’s a but. Then his eyes well. I go from feeling bad to more of an um, what-the-fuck. I worry that maybe I was too abrasive. I know that dating often involves someone getting hurt– either I hurt their heart or they hurt mine. But we are only two drinks in. We do not know each other. I wanted to be honest to his face rather than say it in a shitty text later in the week. When a tear comes down his face, I feel terrible. Crapshoot, I tell myself. But I have learned a important lesson. One about expectation. This man came in looking for a wife. Not a drink. He was premature, placing a lot of attachments and assumptions onto someone he did not yet know. I had been on the other side of this date countless times. To see it from this side was clarifying. I took a longer walk home than necessary, pulled some cookie dough out of the freezer, and voicenoted a few girlfriends. Crapshoot, they agreed.
“Sex is better abroad,” my friend Anna says. Wherever she goes– Korea, London, Marseilles– she meets someone.
“I always find a man. They cross my path. I have to do very little. Where are these men in New York?”
Sometimes Anna and I joke that we have to get on a plane to get laid. And while it’s never the goal of our trips, it’s a nice outcome.
We agree that our brains are less on guard when we’re away. Travel provides the ultimate wall-dropper. We are more confident, less regimented, less attached to lists. And so much of the attraction we feel has to do with our own openness. Maybe it’s not that the men are better in Europe, but we’re a better, more unburdened version of ourselves.
As I wait for the butcher’s wife to bag up my donuts, I realize I am hungrier for the donuts than the sex. An apt time to pause.
“New York Magazine just declared that dating in New York has never been worse,” my new friend Eric, announced over cocktails and a pasty at Dean’s last Friday.
My 40 days were almost up.
He was seated to my right. We formed the corner of the bar (I love a corner). And to my left was my friend Caroline, my forever date on this stretch of 6th Avenue. It was one of those nascent spring days. Blue skies, real sun, cherry blossoms, and the first daffodils. There was no better way to soak it in than a 5pm chance walk-in at a new New York restaurant.
Eric was talking with the barman about the wine list at another downtown spot, where he had been a customer and the barman had been a barman. I could tell Eric was an avid patron of reputable restaurants. I could tell he lived for eating, talking, and drinking. Like my friend’s dad from Cork, he was a good conversationalist. I could also tell that he was polite, that as much as he was overhearing my conversation with Caroline, he was not going to encroach. So I made the first move. Someone had to do it. And then the bar was open. Like a living room.
I learned that Eric was born in Cuba and raised on the Upper West Side. A mid-50s Jewish guy, financial advisor. He was not married but happily committed to a WASP (“the Revolutionary War kind”), who was not with him tonight because she’d gone to a five hour (!) opera. He recounted to Caroline and I the glory days of Soho and Tribeca, everything downtown. “Dead now.” he said. He didn’t want to say it, such a cliché, but it was true.
He mentioned the merger happening in the booze business. Brown Forman (Jack Daniels) was being acquired by Pernod Ricard (Absolut, Jameson, etc). Big deal. He saw this as a sign or symptom of the death. “Young people, they don’t drink. They go to the gym,” he said.
He was trying to sort out if the New York Magazine headline was true. He shook his head in pity. An Alex Cooper conversation 2.0.
I told him that I was dating in two countries. “In Ireland, its farmers and tradesmen. In New York a lot of lawyers. Men in suits. It’s like whiplash.”
“You’re a catch,” he said, “I’m not worried about you.”
I spent some of the 40 days of lent in Ireland. But on this trip, instead of having sex, I signed myself up for a few days of silence at a buddhist retreat center on a remote and rocky peninsula. No phone, no computer. Just a book, the full moon and the sea. It was the most turned on I’ve been in months. (The buddhists, they’re on to something.)
Upon returning, I faced a tricky test. A friend’s wedding.
When I agreed to no sex, I had not realized that the wedding was in the no-sex window. Coming off the buddhist retreat, flying home on the plane, I was ready to let my agreement out the window.
Weddings are a great conduit to romance. The intimacy starts way before you see the guy you might want to make out with. The ceremony is complete emotional foreplay. It opens the heart and makes it mushy.
Plus, the bride had said there were a fair amount of singles invited (a rarity these days). She was sprinkling seeds.
“What’s the vibe you’re looking for?” she texted me a few days before the big day.
“Something fun for a short time?” I said, adding, “Has a brain and preferably no trust fund.”
She thought of someone and then retracted it, “He’s cute, but he may not be sophisticated enough for you.”
Then she mentioned a guy from our New York City youth. This wedding was full of men I went to camp with or men who were middle or high-school adjacent. She relieved me quickly, typing, “Kidding.” When you grow up in this city, those men are off limits.
“You know there is a time and place for sophistication,” I said, “and then there’s a time and place for something hot and dumb.”
“HA HA,” she texted back, “but that actually gives me an idea.”
I had never met a bride who took the time to be a matchmaker before her own wedding. It was totally unnecessary, and badass and thoughtful.
The wedding came. I chose my outfit about three hours before the ceremony and took the subway uptown with friends. We took pictures on our film cameras, cried at the vows, and filled our pockets with matchbooks mementos and table cards.
In the end, I never looked for her “idea.” I was too busy dancing. And you know who I ended up talking to at the end of the night? A New York City guy, the type I normally swear off. It was unexpected and nice. He was a good conversationalist. We talked about movies. We ogled at the actors and celebrity guests leaving the wedding.
The afterparty was at the Chelsea Hotel. We all needed cabs downtown. I headed to the lobby, a slew of dresses and suits from bright orange satin to brown corduroy to cream milling about. I spotted my friends. They had already called a car. I found the movie man and offered him a ride.
He told me he was not coming to the hotel.
At the Chelsea, I took my heels off quickly. They were over five inches tall. I rubbed my feet, sore from the dance floor. I ordered a bloody burger and fries. The bun was perfect. Sesame. There was a pickle.
I shared the fries with the groom’s best friend, who was sitting across from me. “I saw you talking to [movie man] earlier,” he said, “You think there’s something there?”
“Yeah it was nice,” I answered, “but I asked him to come to the hotel and he said no, so I don’t think so?”
“Hmm. He’s just shy, I think,” said the friend, “Maybe another time?”
“Well,” I said, “When the woman you’ve been hitting it off with invites you to get in a cab and go downtown, you should really say, ‘yes.’ It’s kind of an in the moment, one-night-only kind of offer… You know, there’s momentum.”
“Yeah,” the friend said and took a long pause, “Men are dumb sometimes.”
I went to grab another fry. I wanted mayo. We only had ketchup and mustard. I flagged down the server. I ordered the mayo. Several sides, please".
The friend looked at me. “You’re a catch,” he said.
I laughed. I stuffed the last bit of burger into my mouth. I rubbed my feet again, starting to dream about something very close and very far away: home. Wiping off my mascara and red lipstick. Taking off all this jewelry. Removing my nail polish. I thought about a man, a specific man, ripping off my tights. I never wear tights. I thought about him running my swollen feet under a cold tap until they were less swollen. I thought about putting my clean feet in my clean bed next to this man. That was enough for me.
I was smiling. “Yes I am,” I said and starting fiddling for my heels to go home.
A brilliant piece of writing Lily!
6th ave squad forever!!