DWEEBS, NERDS, AND LOSERS

"It was David P. that did it," Trudie said. Trudie is the editor in chief of a magazine for teenage girls. She is forty-one, but at times she looks like a lovely sixteen year old, with huge blue eyes and black hair.

She leaned back in her chair, pointed to a bookshelf crammed with photos. "I call that, 'Trudie and. . " she said.

"It's photos of me and all the losers I went out with. I like to catalogue things.

"I used to specialize in the two-year relationship. I did everything to make them work. Couples therapy. Talked for hours about commitment problems. Fought. And then I realized, you know what? I'm not going to change a forty-year-old guy who hates women. It's—not—my—problem.

"I set a deadline for myself. I said, I have to be married by the time I'm forty. I was dating David P. He was fifty and dishonest. I told him I wanted to be married. He kept making excuses. Sucking me back in. 'Let's just go on this one trip to China, and when we come back, we'll figure it out, he'd say. And then we were in Venice, at the Gritti Palace, one of those rooms with the wooden shutters that open onto the Grand Canal. 'Let's face it, he said. 'You're never going to find anyone in Manhattan who's going to want to get married. So why don't we just stay like this forever.

And that's when I left for good."

When Trudie got back to Manhattan, she dug out all her old Filofaxes and called every man she'd ever met in Manhattan. "Yes, every one of them: all the guys I'd passed over, who I'd thought were dweebs, nerds, losers, didn't have enough hair."

"My husband's name was on the list—he was the last one," Trudie said. "I remember thinking, If he doesn't work out, I don't know what I'm going to do." (This, of course, was typical New York-woman modesty, because New York women always know what they're going to do.) The truth is, Trudie had three dinners with her future husband (she didn't know he was going to be her husband then), and he went off to Russia for two months. It was the beginning of summer, and Trudie went to the Hamptons and completely forgot about him. In fact, she began dating two other guys.

Trudie smiled and examined her nails. "Okay, he called at the end of the summer, and we began seeing each other again. But the point is you have to be willing to walk at any time.

You have to put your foot down. They can't think you're this poor, suffering httle woman who can't live without them. Because it's not true. You can."

When it comes to marrying a man in Manhattan, two rules apply. "You have to be sweet," said Lisa, thirty-eight, a correspondent for a network news show. But at the same time, said Britta, a photo rep, "you can't let them get away with anything."

For these women, age is an advantage. If a woman has survived single in New York until her mid— to late thirties, chances are she knows a thing or two about how to get what she wants. So, when one of these New York women targets a man as a potential husband, there is usually very httle he can do to get away.

"You have to start the training from day one," said Britta. "I didn't know that I wanted to marry my husband at the beginning. I only knew that I wanted him, and I would do whatever it took to get him. And I knew I would.

"You can't be like these stupid girls who only want to marry rich guys," she continued. "You have to be a bit calculating. You always have to expect more than you have. Take Barry [her husband]. As much as he hated it, he didn't want a typical girl who would let him do whatever he wanted. If someone got him now, they'd be so lucky. He's smart, sweet, he cooks and cleans. And you know what? He hated it every step of the way."

Before Barry, Britta was the kind of woman who once made her date go to the coat check to get her a pack of cigarettes and ran out the back door with someone else while he wasn't looking. "I once called Barry from the top of a mountain in Aspen and cussed him out for ten minutes because he had another date for New Year's Eve. Of course, it was only a month after we'd met, but still."

After that, Barry pretty much came around, except for two shghtly sticky problems. He liked to look at other women, and he sometimes complained about not having his space,

especially after she moved in with him. "Well, first of all, I always made sure we had lots of fun," says Britta. "I cooked. We both gained thirty pounds. We got drunk together. We watched each other get drunk. We took care of each other when we puked.

"You have to do unexpected things. Like one time he came home and there were candles all over the place and I served him up a TV dinner. Then I used to make him put on some of my clothes. But you've got to watch these men all the time. I'm sorry, but they spend 80 percent of their time away from you. When they're with you, they can pay attention. Why should they be checking out some other chick when they're eating with you? One time, when Barry's eyes were wandering, I hit him over the head so hard he nearly fell off his chair. I told him, 'Put your tongue back in your mouth and your tail between your legs and finish your dinner. "

Keeping him, however, is another story. "Women in this town don't care if a guy is married or engaged," Britta said. "They'll still go after him. You have to be on top of it all the time."

Sometimes Mr. Big seems to retreat into himself, and then there is only the surface Mr. Big. Friendly to everyone. Maybe affable is the word. Always perfectly turned out. White cuffs. Gold cufflinks. Matching suspenders (though he almost never takes his jacket off). It isn't easy when he's in that mode. Carrie wasn't always good with people she thought were too conservative. She wasn't used to it. She was used to everybody being drunk and doing drugs (or not doing them). Mr. Big got mad when Carrie said outrageous things like, "I'm not wearing any underwear," even though she was. And Carrie thought Mr. Big was too friendly to other women, especially models. They'd be out and a photographer would say, "Do you mind?" and then motion for Mr. Big to have his picture taken with some model, and it

was insulting. One time a model sat on his lap, and Carrie turned and said, "Gotta go," with a really pissed-off look on her face. "Hey, come on," Mr. Big said.

Carrie looked at the model, "Excuse me, but you're sitting on my boyfriend's lap."

"Resting. Just resting," the model said. "There's a big difference." "You have to learn how to deal vsrith this," Mr. Big said.

Date: 2014-12-29; view: 955