THE M&MS

"Here's the deal," Jerry said. "There's a window of opportunity for women to get married in New York. Somewhere between the ages of twenty-six and thirty-five. Or maybe thirty-six." We agreed that if a woman's been married once, she can always get married again; there's something about knowing how to close the deal.

"But all of a sudden, when women get to be thirty-seven or thirty-eight, there's all this. . stuff," he said. "Baggage. They've been around too long. Their history works against them. If I were single and I found out that a woman had gone out with Mort Zuckerman or 'Marvin' (a publisher)—the M&Ms—forget it. Who wants to be twentieth on that line? And then if they pull any of those other stunts, like children out of wedlock or rehab stays— that's a problem."

Jerry told a story: Last summer, he was at a small dinner in the Hamptons. The guests were in TV and movies. He and his wife were trying to fix up a forty-year-old former model with a guy who had just gotten divorced. The two were talking, and suddenly something came up about Mort Zuckerman, and then Marvin, and suddenly Jerry and his wife were watching the guy turn off.

"There's a list of toxic bachelors in New York," said Jerry, "and they're deadly."

Later in the day, I relay the story to Anna, who's thirty-six, and who has a habit of disagreeing with everything men say. All guys want to sleep with her, and she's constantly chewing them out for being shallow. She's dated the M&Ms and she knows Jerry. When I tell her the story, she screams. "Jerry is just jealous. He'd like to be like those guys, except he doesn't have the money or the power to pull it off. Scratch the surface and every guy in New York wants to be Mort Zuckerman."

George, thirty-seven, an investment banker, is another guy who sees the toxic bachelors as a problem. "These guys—the

plastic surgeon, that Times editor, the crazy guy who owns those fertility clinics—they all take out the same pool of women and it never goes anywhere," he said. "Yeah, if I met a woman who had gone out with all those guys, I wouldn't like it."

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 906