Suppose there were thousands of men who, every Thursday night, dressed up as Chewbacca or Boba Fett and headed en masse to an inviting “Star Wars”-themed neighborhood where they could discuss their strange obsessions at bars like Cloud City or Jar Jar’s Joint while guzzling specialty cocktails (the TatooTini, the Hothmopolitan).
That would be strange, but not quite as strange as what happens at the “Sex and the City” theme park in the Meatpacking District, which is about two years away from installing its first TGIFridays and already is to hip what Mark Hamill is to acting. Unlike the “Star Wars” nerds, who are under no illusions that they will ever actually take the Millennium Falcon out for a chance to complete the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs, the “Sex and the City” fangirls think that they can live the life they see on TV.
So they swarm the night, staggering packs of “Sex” geeks – the hungry streets beneath them cackling, “Say hello to my leetle cobblestones, Manolo mamas!” – heedless to the fact that the ratio of them to their male equivalents is already the inverse of ComicCon and getting worse. The cougars of the movie, reviving their Jurassic snark for one more pun-dump, have digital airbrushing on their side, but in reality, bitchy 43-year-old women are not the center of attention at the clubs. Sexist? Not I. God.
Even 33-year-old women are not living in reality in this town. The multiplexes and networks and bookstores can barely accommodate all the movies and TV series and books (almost all written by men; one, I recall vaguely, written by me) about comical manboys coming to terms with the need to grow up. There is no equivalent message getting through to women. For them, it’s all “27 Dresses” and “Made of Honor” and novels from “Pride and Prejudice” on that sling the same fantasy: There are two handsome, successful men chasing me. Whichever one will I choose? Then they walk into the bar at Pastis and discover: 150 single women, 50 gay men, 50 straight married men and 25 single straight men, but it’s so loud that it’s impossible to talk to anyone anyway.
And of those 25 single straight men, how many of them would meet the standards of the “Sex” geek? The show is a six-year moanathon about male flaws. They have shoe fetishes (ewwww!). They’re too close to their mothers (Ick!). They have body hair (OMFG no way!) Women are the flawless norm against whose behavior all men are to be measured.
The mating talk among single men is less exacting. It boils down to two questions:
* Is she hot?
* Is she a pain in the ass?
If the answers are yes and no, respectively, the consensus is invariably: Keep her.
They don’t suspect it, but as they poke over their arugula, Mad Dog Miranda, “Has the Good Ship Relationship Hit an Iceberg?” Carrie and Disney Princess- Charlotte are all being disqualified on general pain-in-the-assery. (Samantha isn’t, really, but on the other hand Kim Cattrall is old enough to have appeared in “Porky’s”; “Family Guy” wasn’t too far off when it referred to “SATC” as “three hookers and their mom.”) They deride men who break up via Post-It Note, omitting that from the day the first tin cans were strung together the preferred method for women to dump men is to simply stop returning their calls (then mock them some more, for not “getting the hint.”)
The “Sex” obsessed think they’re after Wall Streeters, but even their target group don’t meet their standards. These guys deal in numbers. They aren’t interested in Matisse, much less why Nina Garcia left Elle. Women used to talking to each other, and to gay men, tend to find financiers dull. Moreover, the moneymen work such long hours that they’re not available for prancing through the nightlife. If you take an investment banker to a Broadway show, he’ll sleep through it. If he can spare time for a hobby, it’s going to be ESPN, not DKNY.
Hannah Solos, consider making a long-term commitment to reality. Head for the nonfabulous Midtown pub. Strike up a conversation with that guy watching the Mets game. He’s slightly shorter than you, he refers to beers as “brewskis” and he’s wearing pleated pants, but you’re not exactly Queen Amidala.