"Safe in the City" is more like it...

I’m not one of the “a-girls”—Nina, Adina, Dana and Maria. That group can be found at a bar on the Upper West Side, or one in Chelsea or Williamsburg. They’re the single women with good paying jobs who go out with my friend Prentice. I’m one of the “n” girls, “Denise, Shannon and Robin.” We’re the crew she studied with in college who went on to work in jobs you’re supposed to do “for the love” -- teaching, psychology and social work.

Prentice has brought us together at her many annual parties. (Once a year, Prentice throws a big party for everyone who has invited her to dinner so that she can save time and also because she cannot cook, but you won’t notice that if you are plowing through the crowd for a mélange of finger food, most of it store bought.) One thing we have in common though is a long string of dates with men who, let’s just say, seem to want to cuddle. And that’s it.

Now, no one in either group is “fast,” at all. In the moments when we have time to email, leave voice messages or text message, we actively seek out relationships which have futures. We’ve all done the various electronic matchmaking games with little or even less success because we still don’t know how to lie well enough. On the rare occasions in which we actually meet someone who is able to complete what Prentice calls, “the three steps of dating” and make it from card exchange to actually planning a date, we try very hard to be interested in the gentleman. We listen carefully to his stories and we observe if he listens to ours. Somewhere between the first date and several months later, we all have noticed that, whether the guy listens or is just a good faker, few of our men do more than make basic moves. They hold hands and sometimes they go as far as to simulate activities close to those you can do alone in the safety of your own home. They seem to be eternally “safe” and unwilling to make a single decision. This does not mean that they will avoid meeting your parents or your friends – they are glad to tag along, if only because it is sometimes easier for them to say, “yes” than “no”. But somewhere after the dating process gets comfortable—even after one night of something close to passion, the guys we have been meeting literally fizzle out sexually. For the two of us who are bisexual, we have found the same to be somewhat true of women, but hey, the phrase “lesbian bed death” has a long and storied history.

Marrying these men is not the answer. A few of the members of both circles have actually married some of these guys and found that, even in the twenty-first century, it is possible to be involved in a union which isn’t officially consummated. One of us is still married to the guy anyway because they share an apartment which neither can afford alone. We’d call them “Will and Grace,” but they’re not as affectionate. More like “Tom and Jerry.” I’m not sure which is the mouse or the cat, but there is definitely a chase to the death involved.

Looks are not a factor here. Prentice is a size “one,” I think and dresses like the corporate version of “La Femme Nikita.” (Read: Catwoman, but with an Ann Taylor charge card.) Meanwhile, the one of us who has had the most “intimate” relationships has been told she aspires to the “Michael Moore look”. (Read: Wonderwoman plus fifty pounds, a baseball cap and a wardrobe which is part-Kmart, part-Eddie Bauer.) Even those of us who have no credit at all, have only a resemblance to a distant-great-great aunt, and whose stairmaster is made of subway stairs, can occasionally get lucky. But, we can’t tell what the occasion is….

We know that this problem is not just limited to us as we have heard more stories about “men who just lie there” than we can tell, even if we use the free nights and weekends on our cell phones. Worse yet, we can pass around – and frequently do – the detailed email correspondences noting the continued inability to choose a restaurant, a movie and his lack of suggestion or even intimation of anything risqué. Many of us have had more flirtatious email relationships with our bosses. Or our creditors.

Is it that they, like we, are evaluating the situation and asking themselves if the person they are with is worth the deepest kind of personal risk? Or have men traditionally bragged not just about their conquests, but their interest in sex out of some bizarre effort to, perhaps, put women on their guards and somehow take the pressure off of themselves? (Meaning: Make us feel like they are predators to make us defensive and then blame us for being careful.) Either way, even the most traditional of us would like to feel that the man she dates is actually interested in getting close to her. What we most fear is that we have reached a point where just being “safe in the city” is so hard -- securing that rent-stabilized apartment or the co-op we can just barely afford, maintaining our jobs for as long as we can before another “Reduction in Force,” re-building our skill sets and finally, finding the ideal wallet for our metrocards -- that we are now all too afraid to do more than hold hands with the person who might someday be on our life insurance policy. Remember, I said, “might be.” Hasn’t happened yet to any of us…