Is There Still Sex in the City?

She rolled her eyes. I’d been seeing her for the last four years and every time she brought up sex I’d have to explain that I was “about to get around to it, very, very soon.” Much like cleaning out the gutters.

But this time she wasn’t buying it.

“That’s why I brought up the Mona Lisa,” she said, sounding like a woman in an advert. “It’s a new laser treatment that restores thickness and elasticity to the vagina.”

She slid a purple pamphlet toward me. “Think about it. You’ll find it makes a huge difference when it comes to sex.”

I coughed. “How much?”

“It’s three treatments for three thousand dollars.”

Three thousand dollars? No thanks.

Afterward, I went to lunch with a Hollywood producer. He wanted to discuss the possibility of some vague TV show that would vaguely be about sex and I was happy to be vague about it in exchange for an opportunity to put on proper clothing, go out to lunch, and eat with a cloth napkin.

“Have you ever heard of the Mona Lisa treatment?” I asked.

He went white.

He knew all about it. His wife—actually, his soon-to-be ex-wife—had undergone the treatment two years earlier, at fifty-two. At first, all had been fine, but then she told him he wasn’t enough anymore and began an affair with the horse trainer he’d hired to teach his teenage girls. They were now getting married. This despite the fact that the horse trainer was over twenty years younger than the wife.

I had to feel sorry for the guy. He was nearly crying. He seemed shocked by the possibility that a younger man might prefer an older woman. I pointed out that if the roles were reversed—if it had been an older male who had run off with a younger female—he would have considered the age difference­, and the behavior, normal.

Now, thanks to the Mona Lisa treatment, it seemed the shoe truly was on the other foot. If older women could have relationships like older men—meaning with partners decades younger than themselves—would they? Would more women give up their so-called age-appropriate men for younger, hotter guys?

Yes, they would, according to my friend Ess. Especially if, like Ess, they live in the 1 percent.

These are women who’ve spent years looking good for their husbands she explained. “After dieting, doing yoga, and spending thousands of dollars on Botox and filler, what’s another laser treatment?” Indeed, it’s not unusual for a husband to give his wife the Mona Lisa treatment for her fiftieth birthday.

Like most of these laser treatments, the Mona Lisa doesn’t work for everyone. But when it does, watch out. Ess could name three women who had done it and had recently left their husbands.

The Viagra Effect

“It’s like what happened when older men first got Viagra,” she explained. “They suddenly had hard-ons and wanted to have sex with their wives and the wives didn’t want to anymore and so the older guys left their wives for younger women. This is the reverse.”

Sort of. The biggest problem with the analogy is that most women, unlike men, will not have the opportunity to experience this new dating phenomenon. As usual, there’s a big difference in the price men pay for youth versus what it costs women.

How much will that “little blue pill” set you back? Not a lot, I’d wager. Like so many things male, it’s probably covered by insurance. In any case, it doesn’t cost anywhere near three thousand dollars.

Which made me realize that if I wanted to continue to explore this sex question, I was going to have to use what I already had: my bicycle.

Meet the New Bicycle Boys

Twenty-five years ago, when I’d first written about “bicycle boys,” they were a rarified group. A little boyish, a little juvenile, they tended to be bookish and a touch nerdy and also annoying with their bikes, especially when they tried to bring them up to your apartment like they were some kind of pet. Their bike riding was considered a little silly and a little dangerous. It also signaled a lack of funds.

Today, the opposite is true. The bicycle boys are not only everywhere but like a virus that can’t be stopped, they’ve mutated into dozens of different types.

Following are but a few:

The Family-Man Billionaire–Tech Guy

He has a passel of kids with different wives and somewhere on one of his thirty-million-dollar properties is a jungle gym. He likes to impress his other billionaire–tech guy friends with his prowess, so one of the things he does is road bike from New York City to Montauk—back and forth—in a day.

The good: He is rich, fit, and fertile.

The bad: He changes marriages the way other guys change bicycle tires.

The Pack-Rat