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I went to visit Candace Bushnell, author of Sex and the City
(Atlantic Monthly Press), at a time when president Clinton, with
thinly veiled pre-election gladhanding, has approved the citizenship
of a record number of immigrants to the US. I saw a picture of small
congregations of them, hands over hearts, being sworn in, or
reprogrammed or initiated, and I felt infinitely sad about people who
believe in America and people who want to belong because I don't
believe in America, nor do I want to belong, ever.
The connection between the new citizens and the rail-thin, electric-
eyed, blond-maned, Merit Ultra Light smoking, patent- leather-
ankle-boot-with-a-heel-this-high wearing Bushnell appears tenuous
at first. I catch her in the lobby of the Upper East Side building which
houses her office; mail spills out of her hands as she sweeps into the
elevator and starts discussing the difficulty of getting a cab outside
of the Plaza. "There was a fight," Candace tells me with grim
emphasis. Candace has been at the Plaza meeting her new agent
speicalizing in television appearances by non-actors, she explains, as
we enter a cluttered, ambiguously appointed "office" which also
seems to be a potential residence. The phone is ringing as we come
in, and we are suddenly pitched into a burlesque of attentiveness to
the setting, as in an acting class: Perfecting the Entrance. Candace
whips up the receiver but the line is dead. "Fuck it," she says loudly
and dismissively, then begins to explain away the clutter. "I want to
put in a lightbulb," she tells me, and I am mystified -- what does she
mean? -- until she returns with an actual lightbulb which she screws
into a lamp next to the couch. There is suddenly a lot of not entirely
pleasant light.
Sex and the City is a collection of Bushnell's near-monthly
column for The New York Observer, which follows the exploits,
trials, humiliations, chance encounters and affairs of a group of New
Yorkers who inhabit a rarified, oxygenless social clime of billionaires,
millionaires, movie moguls, men who date models, art people and
others who are rich, beautiful and deeply socially connected. Central
to the column's ongoing narrative is Carrie, a character who is dating
a certain Mr. Big. If you are in the know (which you could be without
even being close to being in the circle), you know that Mr. Big is
based on Vogue publisher Ron Galotti. Most of the parties, lunches at
Le Cirque, sex-club going, and hanging out at Bowery Bar is done by
Carrie, who is a little too self-aware to be as hapless as she appears.
The column, Bushnell says, was a way of solving different little
writing problems, problems with style, with dialogue, with pacing.
"It's really about people being part of a tribe," she says, swinging her
feet up onto a table. "And what you find is that you are really more
like the people in the tribe than you are like the people outside of it."
I tell her that one of my favorite parts of the book is a scene where
two international beauties who hate each other, Ray and Amalita, run
into each other at lunch at Harry Cipirani's. "They hate each other but
it's not cut and dried," I tell Candace, "they capitulate to each other,
they acknowledge the power the other wields." Candace is nodding
vigorously. "Man survives best in small groups," she says. "In New
York, so many people are broken down into these groups --" "Broken
down?" I jump in quickly, searching for a dark interiority. "Are you
in some way suggesting ground down?" Candace looks genuinely
puzzled. "Nooo,' she says, "there really are these sub groups. Like for
instance, there are about two thousand people in this group I write
about. Peggy Siegel [the Ur-publicist] talks about having five
thousand people in her Rolodex. Of those, probably about two
thousand 'go out' and of those people .." her voice trails off. "Sort of
like Dantean circles of hell?" I pose helpfully, which gets a chuckle
(deeply serrated) from Candace. "Sort of like Dantean circles, but it's
more like the constant question is: 'what are you going to buy into?'"
"Pod people," Candace tells me, "are the people you read about in
gossip columns. When you meet them, they're soulless, there's
nothing inside. These types operate well in New York. They're able to
endure humiliations most of us can't. Not being able to get into a
party, for example. One survival mechanism in New York is a
deliberate unselfawareness which leads to an inability to be
ashamed, or embarrassed, or humiliated. It's a lot of millionaires and
billionaires," she adds thoughtfully. I realize that I am afraid to ask
in what kind of world millionaires and billionaires are ever in danger
of being socially humiliated. "The thing I have a problem with," she
continues, "is that the methods these rich and powerful men use to
get into certain circles don't work in actual relationships."
There's not an explicitly feminist tone to the book, I point out, but
there is a concern for other women which emerges as a motif. Does
she think women need a lot of help in navigating the city? "I don't
like to think there are inherent differences between women and
men," Candace answers. "I think gender-based differences are
actually differences based on the money/status/power dynamic.
What's disappointing for women, what's disappointing for me, is the
way that men use women to feel 'bigger.'"
We are interrupted by a phone call. "Babes!" Candace shrieks, "Hi! I'm
doing an interview!(a pause) I'm not going (pause)I wasn't invited."
She's off the phone two seconds later. "What women may not realize
is that men really do think the way women are afraid they think." I
made a silent note to myself that she's referring to men's investment
in trophy women. "The "bad" masculine traits," Candace tells me, "like
posturing, using the opposite sex as an object, are actually done
because they're pleasurable, but nobody wants to admit this. Men
are afraid that women will start doing this too. I'm not someone who
thinks men are awful," she continues. "In a war between the sexes
I'd like to see women come out on top, because I'm a woman. As a
child I had fantasies of being the rescuer, the swashbuckler, like that
film with Geena Davis and Matthew Modine? The one where she
rescues the guy and gets the treasure?"
I mention a scene in Sex and the City, where Carrie has just
smoked some pot. Walking home she sees a woman and "suddenly
Carrie feels like a shark smelling blood. She fantasizes about killing
the woman and eating her. It's terrifying how much she's enjoying
the fantasy." I say that this passage gives us a new impossible angle
on Carrie, who, as Candace describes her, is "self-sacrificing with a
brain." Candace agrees. "This was based on an actual party," she says,
"and this is typical of New York. You go and hang out with people and
you feel like you know them, even though you don't." I nod in silent
agreement, remembering all the times I've found myself comfortably
hanging out with a group of strangers I may never see again. "Seeing
this woman after this experience -- she seemed just like a sheep that
had wandered out of the fold, just kind of jiggling along. I thought it
would be easy to catch and kill her -- and anyway, you have to eat!"
she exclaims feverishly.
"The New York cocktail party will never become obsolete," Candace
tells me. "It's psychologically healthy for people to interact with lots
of other people. We're social animals." I am still mulling this over as I
leave the Upper East Side and board the poky, provincial F train into
Brooklyn. I am thinking hard about the concept of a tribe and why it
scares me, why I think of Lord of the Flies instead of lovely
communality and conviviality. Next to me, a woman, a new citizen
perhaps, is reading from a text book, a chapter entitled "Introduction
and Address Systems, unit 2." The subheadings include Apologizing,
Thanking, and Giving Compliments and Replying to Compliments. It's
such a long road, I realize, to the tribe, and it requires so much
mastery of detail. The F train rising above Brooklyn and Manhattan
explicitly sunders the tribal worlds where a wealthy predator lies in
wait on every corner for an earnest immigrant who has recently
mastered Giving Compliments.< P>
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