Call it a combination of skin (the topless women on Media Beach), geography (it takes sooooo long to drive from Southampton to East Hampton, especially if it’s four in the morning), and topography (all those high hedges where couples can hide).
But figuring out how to work all those elements to one’s advantage, especially if you’re a man, can take some finesse. And youth is not necessarily an advantage. You have to know the ropes and how to get out of them gracefully afterward. Otherwise, you’ll end up with something, but it might not be what you expected.
Here’s a cautionary tale about three hopeful bachelors in the Hamptons during Fourth of July weekend.
But first, meet our contestants.
Bachelor No. 1: Skipper Johnson, twenty-five. Preppy. Entertainment law. Boy wonder. Plans to run one of the big studios someday, which he says will be in New York. Beach toys: small Mercedes, Brooks Brothers clothing (“I have a Brooks Brothers body”), and cellular phone, of which he makes constant use. Recently, friends complained that Skipper spent two hours in the parking lot at the beach, on the phone, doing a deal. “It’s such a waste of time going to the beach,” Skipper says. “Besides, I don’t like getting sandy.” Is worried about his recent lack of sexual success. “Do women think I’m gay?” he asks, earnestly.
Bachelor No. 2: Mr. Marvelous, sixty-five, says he’s sixty. Square jaw, silver hair, bright blue eyes, athletic—all parts work on demand. Married (and divorced) five times. Twelve kids—wives number two, three, and four all good friends. Buddies wonder what his secret is. Beach toys: none. But can talk about penthouse apartment on Park Avenue, house in Bedford, apartment in Palm Beach. Staying with friends for the weekend on Further Lane in East Hampton. Considering buying a place.
Bachelor No. 3: Stanford Blatch, thirty-seven. Screenwriter. The next Joe Eszterhas. Gay but prefers straight guys. Long, dark, curly hair; refuses to cut it or put it in a ponytail. Will probably get married and have kids someday. Stays in Grandmother’s house on Halsey Neck Lane in Southampton; Grandma lives in Palm Beach. Beach toys: doesn’t drive, so convinces family chauffeur to come out on weekends to drive him around. Best beach toy: has known everybody worth knowing since he was a child, so he doesn’t have to prove it.
SKIPPER’S COLD SHOWER
Friday night. Skipper Johnson drives out to Southampton, where he has arranged to meet friends at Basilico: four women, all in their late twenties, who work at Ralph Lauren, and who, to the naked eye, are indistinguishable from one another. Skipper finds their bland prettiness comforting, as well as the fact that there’s a small herd of them. It means that he doesn’t have the burden of trying to keep one of them entertained for the evening.
They drink Pine Hamptons at the bar. Skipper pays. At eleven o’clock, they go to M-80. There’s a crowd outside, but Skipper knows the doorman. They drink cocktails out of plastic cups. Skipper runs into some friends—the modelizers George and Charlie. “I’ve got twelve girls staying at my place this weekend,” George boasts to Skipper. George knows that Skipper is dying to come over, so he purposely doesn’t invite him. Two of the models begin throwing cocktails at each other, laughing.
At two A.M., one of the girls gets sick in the bushes. Skipper offers to drive them home: a ranch house just before you get to the good part of Southampton. They have a case of beer in the refrigerator, nothing else. Skipper goes into a bedroom and sits on the bed with one of the girls and sips a beer. He lies down and closes his eyes, slipping his arm around the girl’s waist. “I’m too drunk to drive home,” he says in a puppy dog voice.
“I’m going to sleep,” the girl says.
“Oh, please let me stay. We’ll just sleep. I promise,” Skipper says.
“Okay. But you have to sleep on top of the bed. With your clothes on.”
Skipper complies. He falls asleep and begins snoring. Sometime in the middle of the night, the girl kicks him out to the couch.
Saturday morning. Skipper drives toward his house in East Hampton and decides to stop off to visit his friends Carrie and Mr. Big in Bridgehampton. Mr. Big is shirtless in the backyard, smoking a cigar and watering the plants around the pool. “I’m on vacation,” he says.
“What are you doing? Don’t you have a gardener?” Skipper asks. Carrie is smoking cigarettes and reading the New York Post. “He is the gardener. He washes cars, too.”
Skipper strips down to his boxer shorts and dives in the water like a cartoon character, with his knees bent at right angles sticking out to the sides. When he comes up for air, Mr. Big says, “Now I know why you can’t get laid.”
“What am I supposed to do?” Skipper asks.
“Have a cigar,” says Mr. Big.
MR. BLATCH IN LOVE
Saturday, Halsey Neck Lane. Stanford Blatch is sitting by the pool, talking on the phone and watching his brother’s girlfriend, whom he hates, trying to read his New York Observer. He’s talking in an especially loud voice in the hope that she might go away. “But you have to come out,” he says into the phone. “It’s ridiculous. What are you going to do? Sit in the city all weekend and work? Get on the seaplane. I’ll pay.
“Well, bring the manuscripts. You agents, you work too damn hard. Of course there’s plenty of room. I have the whole upstairs.”
Stanford hangs up. He walks over to his brother’s girlfriend. “Do you know Robert Morriskin?” When the girl looks at him blankly, he says, “I didn’t think so. He’s the hottest up-and-coming literary agent. He’s adorable.”
“Is he a writer?” she asks.
SKIPPER BLOWS IT
Saturday night. Skipper goes to a barbecue at the home of his friends the Rappaports, a young couple who always seem to be on the verge of divorce. He gets drunk again and tries the “drinking beer and lying on the bed” trick again with a girl named Cindy. It seems to be working, until he mentions that he thinks Jim Carrey is a genius.
“You know, I have a boyfriend,” she says.
Sunday. Mr. Marvelous calls his friends, tells them he’s sick of Bedford and is coming out in his Ferrari.
Stanford Blatch is sitting out by the pool in a paisley Armani cabana suit. A short-sleeved jacket and tight-fitting trunks. He’s on the phone again to Robert Morriskin. “Why don’t you come out tonight? There’s a great party. There aren’t that many great parties out here anymore, you know? Are you bringing a date? Bring a girl if you want. I don’t care.”
SOMETHING AMAZING HAPPENS
Sunday night. Coerte Felske’s book party at Ted Fields’s house. Skipper hasn’t been invited, which pisses him off. Nevertheless, he has arranged to go to the party by offering to drive Stanford Blatch, whom he knows vaguely and who is invited everywhere, to the party.
The party is outside. Skipper notices that a young woman named Margaret is paying a lot of attention to him. Margaret is short, with dark hair and large breasts, pretty—but not Skipper’s type. Works in public relations. Skipper and Margaret decide they have to go to the bathroom, which means walking along a torchlit path snaking behind some bushes to the porta-potties. They head for some hedges. They start kissing. And then something amazing happens.
“I just really want to do this,” Margaret says, and she kneels down and unzips his pants. Skipper is astounded. The whole act takes less than two minutes.
“You’re going to give me a ride home, aren’t you?” Margaret says, nudging him.
“I can’t,” he says. “I promised I would give Stanford a ride home, and you live in the opposite direction.”
OH, MR. MARVELOUS!
Further Lane. Mr. Marvelous from Bedford arrives just in time for dinner. His host, Charlie, has been divorced for five years. He’s invited some men and some women in their thirties to early forties. Mr. Marvelous sits next to a woman named Sabrina: thirty-two, breasts spilling out of a black Donna Karan tank top. Mr. Marvelous gets her drinks, is sympathetic about her ex-husband. At eleven o’clock, Sabrina says they have to go to Stephen’s Talk House in Amagansett to meet some frien
ds. Mr. Marvelous offers to drive her car, she might be a little drunk. They end up at Sabrina’s house at three in the morning.
When he walks in, her girlfriend says, “If you’ve got any kinky ideas in your head, you can just forget them right now.” She lies down on the couch and turns out the light.
Later, about five in the morning, Mr. Marvelous begins feeling claustrophobic. Sabrina’s house is tiny. He can hear her friend snoring on the couch just outside the bedroom door. “I’m going out of my mind,” he thinks.
Monday. Mr. Marvelous calls Sabrina, whom he just left an hour before. Her machine is on. “Do you want to come to the beach?” He goes to Media Beach, meets Carrie and Mr. Big. Then he spots an attractive blond with a cocker spaniel. He walks up to her and starts playing with her dog. They get into a conversation. He thinks he’s getting somewhere when her boyfriend walks up. A big, hulking guy with an overdeveloped chest and short legs. Mr. Marvelous returns to his towel. Samantha Jones is there, sitting with Carrie and Mr. Big.
The girl and her boyfriend walk up the beach. When the blond passes Mr. Marvelous, she turns and waves.
“See? I told you she was interested. Really interested,” Mr. Marvelous says.
“In you?” Samantha asks. She laughs meanly.
CELLULAR BREAKDOWN
Skipper is playing tennis when he hears his cellular phone ringing.
“Hi, honey,” Margaret says. “Just wondering what you’re doing.”
“I’m in the middle of a tennis game,” Skipper says.
“Wanna come over after? I’d love to cook you dinner over here.”
“Uh, I can’t.”
“What do you mean, you can’t?”
“I mean, I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I told some other people I would go over to their house for dinner.”
“So we’ll go together.”
Skipper lowers his voice. “I don’t think I can do that. It’s kind of business, you know what I mean?”
“My little mogul,” Margaret says.
Robert Morriskin finally arrives by seaplane. Stanford is a little pissed he didn’t come the day before, so he sends the chauffeur in the old Ford station wagon to pick him up instead of the Mercedes.
Mr. Marvelous returns from the beach. Sabrina called. He calls her back immediately but gets her machine.
“IS IT ELLE?”
Monday evening. Carrie, Mr. Big, and Mr. Marvelous are on their way to a cocktail party. Mr. Marvelous drives his big Mercedes slowly up Mecox Lane, past the horse farms. The sun is beginning to go down, and the grass has a particular green calmness. There’s a little hill, and when the car comes over the top, there’s a woman awkwardly rollerblading. She’s wearing a tight white T-shirt and tiny black shorts. She has long dark hair tied up in a ponytail, but it’s her legs that get you.
“I’m in love,” Mr. Marvelous says. When she turns off down a side road, he drives the car straight on, but then stops and puts his hands on top of the steering wheel. “I’m going back.”
Carrie tries to give Mr. Big a look, but he ignores her. He is laughing, going along with it all.
Mr. Marvelous speeds up the road after the girl. “Look at her. She doesn’t even know how to rollerblade. She’s going to get hurt.” They pass the girl, and Mr. Big says, “Is it Elle? She looks like Elle.”
Carrie’s sitting in the back seat, smoking a cigarette. “Too young for Elle,” she says.
Mr. Big rolls down his window and says, “Hi.”
The girl comes up to the car. “Hi,” she says smiling, then looks confused. “Do I know you?”
“I don’t know,” says Mr. Marvelous, leaning across the seat. “I’m Mr. Marvelous.”
“I’m Audrey,” says the girl. She looks at Mr. Big. “You look like someone I know.”
Mr. Marvelous hops out of the car. “Do you know how to stop? You’ve got to know how to stop. Rollerblading can be dangerous.”
The girl is laughing. “Here’s what you do,” Mr. Marvelous says, demonstrating by squatting down with one foot in front of him and sticking his arms straight out.
“Thank you,” the girl says. She begins to skate away. “Are you a model?” Mr. Marvelous says.
“No,” she says, over her shoulder. “No, I’m a student.”
Mr. Marvelous gets back in the car. “She had a ring on her finger. What’s her husband doing letting her go rollerblading by herself? I would have asked her to marry me. She was that beautiful. Did you see her? What was her name? Audrey. Her name was Audrey. Kind of old-fashioned, huh?”
THE BOY IN BLUE CHINTZ
Stanford has arranged a dinner at Della Femina’s for Robert. Afterward, they all go back to the house on Halsey Neck and smoke pot. At two in the morning, Robert begs off, saying he’s got to plow through that pile of manuscripts in the morning. Stanford walks him to his room, which is decorated in traditional Southampton chintz. “I’ve always loved this room,” Stanford says. “You can’t get this blue chintz anymore. I hope you won’t be too hot. I still think it’s best to sleep without the covers in the summer. We used to do that when we were kids. Before my grandmother discovered air conditioning.”
Stanford sits down in an armchair as Robert gets undressed. Robert doesn’t seem to mind, and Stanford keeps up a patter of chitchat. Robert gets into bed and closes his eyes. “Tired?” Stanford says. He walks to the bed and looks down at Robert, whose eyes are closed. “Are you sleeping?”
INDEPENDENCE DAY
Tuesday, Fourth of July. The cellular phone: It’s Margaret. “Hi, honey. Everybody’s going back early, and I don’t want to. When are you going back? Can I get a ride?”
“I’m not going back until tomorrow morning,” Skipper says.
“Oh. Well, I could go back tomorrow morning. I’ll call my office.”
“Sure,” says Skipper, unhappily.
“Don’t you just love the end of the weekend when everyone’s left and you’re still out here? Let’s go to dinner.”
“I don’t think I can. I promised some friends . . . ”
“No problem,” Margaret says lightly. “We’ll definitely see each other next weekend. We can plan it in the car tomorrow morning.”
Tuesday, early evening. Mr. Marvelous turns his Mercedes into the road where he last saw Audrey. He gets out, opens the trunk, and after a certain amount of struggle, puts on a pair of rollerblades. He takes a couple of turns up and down the road. Then he leans against the side of his car and waits.
13
Tales of the Pretty
On a recent afternoon, four women met at an Upper East Side restaurant to discuss what it’s like to be an extremely beautiful young woman in New York City. About what it’s like to be sought after, paid for, bothered, envied, misunderstood, and just plain gorgeous—all before the age of twenty-five.
Camilla was the first to arrive. Five feet ten, pale white skin, big lips, round cheekbones, tiny nose—Camilla is twenty-five but says she “feels old.” She began modeling at sixteen. When I first met her, months ago downtown, she was doing her duty as a “date” to a well-known television producer, which meant she was smiling and speaking back when someone asked her a question. Other than that, she was making very little effort, except to occasionally light her own cigarettes.
Women like Camilla don’t need to make much effort, especially with men. While many women would have killed to have a date with Scotty, the TV producer, Camilla told me she had been bored. “He’s not my type,” she said. Too old (early forties), not attractive enough, not rich enough. She said she’d recently returned from a trip to St. Moritz with a young, titled European—that, she said, was her idea of fun. The fact that Scotty is indisputably one of the most eligible bachelors in New York meant nothing to her. She was the prize, not Scotty.
The other three women were late, so Camilla kept talking. “I’m not a bitch,” she said, looking around the restaurant, “but most of the girls in New York are just idiots. Airheads. They can’t even carry on a co
nversation. They don’t know which fork to use. They don’t know how to tip the maid at someone’s country house.”
There are a handful of women like Camilla in New York. They are all part of a sort of secret club, an urban sorority, with just a few requirements for membership: extreme beauty, youth (age range seventeen to twenty-five, or at least not admitting to being over twenty-five), brains, and the ability to sit in new restaurants for hours.
The brains part, however, appears to be relative. As one of Camilla’s friends, Alexis, said, “I’m literary. I read. I’ll sit down and read a whole magazine from cover to cover.”
Yes, these are the beautiful girls who throw off the whole man-woman curve thing in New York, because they get more than their fair share. Of attention, invitations, gifts, and offers of clothes, money, private airplane rides, and dinners on yachts in the South of France. These are the women who accompany the bachelors with the boldface names to the best parties and charity events. The women who get asked—instead of you. They have access. New York should be their oyster. But is it?
“LET’S TALK ABOUT SCUMBAGS”
The other women showed up. Besides Camilla, who said that she was “basically single but working on” a young scion of a Park Avenue family, the women included Kitty, twenty-five, an aspiring actress who was currently living with Hubert, a still-famous-but-basically-out-of-work, fifty-five-year-old actor; Shiloh, seventeen, a model who had had a breakdown of some kind three months before and now rarely goes out; and Teesie, twenty-two, a model who had recently moved to New York and whose agency told her that she had to tell everyone she was nineteen.
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