THE CROTCH PROBLEM

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."

10. Downtown Babes Meet Old 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

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.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 971