The Big Apple: Something’s Rotten

My favorite play by J.M. Barrie, made famous most recently by Finding Neverland, isn’t Peter Pan—it’s What Every Woman Knows. Written in 1908, the play’s revelatory response^* to the title’s implied question needs an update for the times and a particular place: New York City.

Every unattached woman here knows the dire state of the dating scene. And please spare me the predictable, uproarious response I get from male colleagues about how it’s the same for guys and all such nonsense. It’s not. Which is why I was so pleased to read Salon’s interview with Benjamin Kunkel, young author of the much-hyped Indecision, a novel chronicling the transformation of one such vapid urbanite, suffering from a "crisis in American masculinity," who currently thrives in the city that never sleeps.

I’ve been talking about the consumerist mentality that dominates the New York dating scene for a while now. So when Kunkel not only referenced that notion, but fleshed it out by comparing a sense of destiny to buying new pants, I was transfixed:

Partly, a model of shopping has overtaken our experience of romance. Love, historically, has been associated with a sensation of destiny. It's very difficult for us to attain a sensation of destiny where love is concerned anymore, because we think we can always look for something better, which is essentially a shopper's mentality. There's no destiny when it comes to buying pants or shirts or a dress. There'll be the nicest thing you can afford this season. But then a new season will [bring] more attractive styles and you'll actually be able to afford something better. I think that tremendous passion that we feel other generations had and that we missed was attached to a sense of destiny, and of permanent love that would survive changes in station and opportunity and fortune.

He goes on to describe New York as a breeding ground for “disposable relationships” and even suggests women go on a sexual strike, but not in a prudish sense: “You need to make an old-fashioned masculine distinction between sex and love. Just find some guy and use him. The guys you want love from? Give them nothing.”

And then he goes for the jugular, saying something a woman could not state without having her credibility, desirability, and everything else brought to question:

I have a sense that particularly in New York…there is a super-abundance of attractive, intelligent young women whom a man is very unlikely to be worthy of, who nevertheless set a higher value on him than he sets on them. This makes any sort of decision very difficult. Because to constantly be exposed to people whom you are unworthy of to begin with, yet who want you more than you want them, is confusing.

An incident from last weekend supports part of his theory (hint: I play the attractive, intelligent young woman in this scenario). After an evening of bar crawling in the Lower East Side, I tacitly agreed to be wingman for my friend Rachel. After 4 AM, we ended up hanging out at Jeremy’s** flat, where I chatted with his wingman, Jake. Somehow Jake ended up showing me his comic book drawings. “I want to create a comic book backed by a soundtrack,” he revealed, his breath heavy with whisky. Unimpressed but bored, I encouraged him to go on. The hero, called “The Troubleshooter” (or something equally horrendous), also went by the name "Nick" during off hours. “Doesn’t he look tough and hardened?” he asked, trying to lead me to conclusions like a fledgling trial lawyer. I nodded after much drunken deliberation. “But he also looks a bit…racist,” I suddenly concluded: it was the wife-beater and peculiar facial lines. We started to argue as Rachel and Jeremy began to make out in the background. “He fights for the rights of all,” he protested. “Looks like he fights for the rights of whites to me,” I countered.

As this compelling conversation wore on, we finally got to Book Three. Jake moved in closer. “Look, you’re relieved of your wingman duties,” I assured him. “Oh, I gave up my wingman duties hours ago,” he professed. Some black-and-white photos slipped out of the trilogy as I flipped through a treatment for a script of some sort. “Those are pictures of my cat,” Jake said. I thumbed through them and noticed a picture of a girl. I pressed for info. “Oh, that’s my girlfriend,” he said nonchalantly. I wonder what she says about these comics, I thought. We continued talking as the sun rose. Someone suggested opening up a bottle of champagne.

Jake leaned in and whispered a pick-up line. I scoffed and said, “Dude, you have a girlfriend!” to which he replied, “Don’t you have a boyfriend?” As Rachel and Jeremy laughed and sipped champagne on the rug, I shook my finger at Jake and declared, “Guys like you are the scourge of the New York dating scene. You are exactly what’s wrong with this place. You should be ashamed of yourself.” Unabashed, he explained that they had an open relationship and that this was "totally cool." It was not cool with me.

A few hours later I woke up and struggled—but failed—to shake Jake awake. I, alone, remembered he had to go to work (at a comic book store, where he claimed to earn $6/hour) by 11. He ended up waking up late, borrowing my phone to call the store, and jetting off, leaving his keys behind in a scattered flurry. Later in the week I got word from Rachel through Jeremy that Jake was, in fact, homeless. Yes, he lived with his girlfriend every now and then, and couch-crashed the rest of the time. So there you have it: a 5’7,” $6/hr-earning***, homeless, 30-year-old, mediocre-comic-book-drawing lad has no trouble finding a girl willing to put up with such shenanigans. As for me: you need not express surprise any longer when I gleefully mention my Joy Division dance parties for one—the loneliest number, perhaps, but I learned to troubleshoot my own problems long ago.

*Read the play if you want to know what every woman knew back then (and what we still know today)—it’s quite good.
**Names have been changed to protect the guilty.
***Please note: I do not care about height and income, but am going by the ostensible "standards" of our lackluster population.