What if the Whole Samantha Jones Thing Was More Realistic Than We Thought?
By: Rachel Presser
Tags: Sex And The City, Aging, TV Shows, Sexuality, Women

I distinctly recall this conversation I had with this guy I slept with after a punk show in 2010.

“So, what’s your plans?” This was the exact conversation I wanted to avoid. I somehow woke up in some bumblefuck place in Suffolk County, a ways off from my safe and solitary dumpy domicile in The Bronx. Being a grad student broker than Mike Pence after Biden’s inauguration, and the fact that it would take a couple years before rideshare apps would become de rigeur, I unfortunately had to depend on this lamentable one-shot deal for a ride back to the train station. Where it’d take several bumpy transfers before I’d wind up back in the only borough on the continental mainland.

“Sleep off my hangover then play Heroes of Might and Magic?” I mumbled. This was a tally for the “Shit, I regret going home with this guy!” column and I utterly lacked his penchant for conversation at the moment. All I wanted to do was go home, shower, arm my conflux town in Heroes III, and then delete this schmuck’s number from my phone.

“No, I mean for like…the future,” he inquired as we careened down the Long Island Expressway.

I was 25, majorly depressed, broke, and a grad student who attempted to dodge the recession but to no avail. I didn’t really even want to be in grad school, but in the absence of those “good” financial jobs I was promised that suddenly evaporated before I completed my first accounting degree, I didn’t have a whole lot of choice if I wanted luxuries like student health insurance and continuing education stipends.

I’d been kicked out of my last hardcore band only a year prior. I missed being onstage, but didn’t feel like dealing with the bullshit of having a band again yet. I also didn’t want to just join someone else’s band again too soon, I wanted to lead this time. Making indie games was also a dream of mine I forlornly looked at behind case studies of Tax Court rulings. Could I chase it? Would I?

But of a few things I was certain: I didn’t want kids and had less desire to move to Long Island or New Jersey than I did to get a pap smear from Edward Scissorhands. I also only wanted to truly let a man into my life if he was as passionate about subculture and punk, hardcore, and/or metal as me, and if he also didn’t want or have kids. Having a band again would be great once my future was less murky. And if I really had to pick? I’d take my group of girlfriends over a husband, though I truly wanted both despite the intimacy issues I was still consumed by at the time.

Regardless, I did not want this guy driving me to the train station to share a bed a second time, let alone be in the running for a life partner I’d raise a bunch of toads with.

So I said, “I have no fucking idea. Finish grad school and hopefully find a good job after, maybe join or start a death metal band if guys in the hardcore scene are just dragging their feet on starting something new?”

“But who would you do it with?”

I blinked. “My bandmates, my friends, and my pet lizards and toads? I kinda like doing the punk rock Samantha Jones thing.” Relief washed over me as the LIRR station began to come into view.

“Well, friends can fall by the wayside,” he responded with a tone of warning. Much to my dismay, he stayed with me til the train arrived. I wondered why the guys I wished would do that wouldn’t, while this one I really didn’t care about insisted on staying. So goes life.

But I found myself thinking about this statement now that more than a decade passed since this incident.

Most of the people who were in my life at the time are no longer in it, with few exceptions. But neither is the man I had a short-lived on-and-off relationship with a couple years later.

So what the hell made him think a romantic partner would be any more permanent than friends? I’ve been on development teams and played in thrash bands that lasted longer than that utter joke of a relationship I had! People trumpet about how the Millennial divorce rate has tumbled 24% since 1981, but they neglect to mention how many of us aren’t getting married in the first place because it’s not a be-all end-all to many of us. Particularly Millennial women, who are having this utter reckoning in the pandemic: as a childfree entrepreneurial type who’s watching from the sidelines, it really demonstrated to me that there’s two big factors keeping people in miserable marriages: wanting children or needing help with them, and lack of financial independence.

Samantha Jones was adamantly childfree and an incredibly successful businesswoman. She had those two in the bag, and with how depressed wages have become and entrepreneurship not being for everyone? I can see why some would think it’s unrealistic. All of the financial aspects of Sex and the City were unrealistic for a majority of viewers, which I covered extensively in how people miss the show’s source material when addressing this.

Sex and the City had been off the air for a couple years at the time of my hooking up with this guy who was far more into me than I was into him, but I had the DVD set and would frequently watch it. I found myself really identifying with Samantha Jones, and wondered why her character was written off as the most unrealistic — then as a decade progressed, why women didn’t want to be her.

So many people literally cannot comprehend that a woman can be middle-aged and patently enjoying casual sex.

Even if you’re NOT having lots of casual sex, the idea that a woman can be happy and confident without striving for a full-time man is just plain alien to people.

But now that I’ve concluded I’m actually glad I’m toughing out the pandemic by myself, I’ve been thinking about how many pandemic divorces are imminent. Twitter sociologist girlziplocked has a whole thread full of DM confessionals that confirm this.

Transcription of the tweet, she says: “Based on the state of my DMs, I’m predicting like a serious divorce surge. Straight women are done.” The enclosed DM says: “Literally cannot wait to get a divorce, as my marriage has evolved from being merely extremely unhappy to being held emotionally hostage as the caretaker and sole breadwinner. Double the nightmare. My girlfriends and I check in every day on Zoom. The married ones are pulling the trigger as soon as things settle out with the pandemic. The others are reconsidering dating entirely, as they keep running into dude after dude who don’t give a shit about anything (no masks, hanging out indoors with friends, etc.) So we spend our Saturday nights browsing for properties/houses in which we could all live together, having cocktails, and generally getting ready for our future as a group.” To which she responds, “FUCK YEAH”

So we’ve got groups of women building their lives together. Women who know they’ll be happier single. Women like me who met their Richard Wright just like Sam Jones did, left his ass, and are open to pairing off with a Smith Jerrod — or someone completely different as real life is stranger than fiction, and not a 1:1 mirror image — or to just continue having fun no matter how much sex we’re having. If you’re a single woman, you do NOT owe any explanations for how much or how little sex you’re having, or if you want said sex to have an end goal or not. ALL OF IT IS PERFECTLY OKAY.

But when I expressed desires to build a punk and goth girl commune — when properties were SO much cheaper yet and it would’ve been far more doable in the early 2010s! — I was frequently told it was unrealistic.

This seemed to be a recurring theme throughout my mid-late twenties.

I was constantly told that not aspiring to a husband, loving casual sex, and wanting to basically be an alt culture Samantha Jones was “sad and pathetic”.

That I should “want more” than casual sex and occasionally engaging in it with no relationship goals was “demeaning”, and that I should practically base my entire dating and fucking trajectory on whether a man is marriage material instead of just enjoying things for what they are and being open to what could go down.

Better yet, I saw a lot of sentiment — even among those in alt cultures, which could be shockingly slut-shamey at points despite being known for sexual liberation— that a bunch of friends living and building lives together irrespective of romantic and sexual relationships was simply “unrealistic”, “who wants a bunch of roommates that late in life”, and that having casual sex well into middle age — especially as a woman — was equally unrealistic and just plain laughable.

That when I hit this mystical expiration date sometime after my 30th birthday, I’d be all alone after riding the cock carousel while all my girlfriends are now married with babies, and I’d be SOOOOO sad.

Now that I look back on this shit, I am DYING with laughter.

At the dawn of my 36th year, I’ve decided to cross-examine the whole “But Samantha Jones is unrealistic!” thing and just point out that it’s not as rare or departed from reality as you’d think.

Is it any more realistic to expect a long term relationship to work when so many cishet relationship dynamics are based on straight up antipathy for your partner? Or the soulless connections that people make on dating apps, which are akin to throwing spaghetti at the wall to see if it sticks, just so they won’t be alone?

©HBO Films, New Line Cinema

Society tries to fearmonger women in their mid-thirties that we’re now decrepit and doomed to loneliness and settling, when it couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Having age-diverse friendships is important for this reason: all of my older women friends and acquaintances have spilled the tea on how much they’re loving childfree, permanently single, or divorced life in their sixties. Reading Julia E Hubbel’s work has been incredibly eye-opening for me, particularly her pieces on senior dating: you’re going to encounter fuckboys well into your seventies!

Women are never starved for companionship at any age. There’s the phenomenon of being treated like you’re invisible when you’re older? But overall, older women aren’t any having any less trouble finding men to keep them company on an intermittent basis than their younger counterparts at various stages of life.

Because as for thinking that women enjoying a lifetime of casual sex is unrealistic…senior STD rates have hit historic highs. Retirement communities have a hedonistic side to them that you don’t hear much about, because our puerile society thinks “Ew! Old people having sex!” But I encourage you to look more into it: because a confident and charismatic woman like Samantha Jones still getting dick at 52, as of the last film in 2010, is REALLY not that far-fetched a concept in real life!

According to the Census Bureau, 80% of women married to men outlive their husbands. So why do we fearmonger women about “being all alone”?

Is “being alone” really that bad if you can financially support yourself, and have plenty of other things in your life to be passionate about? Friends who care about you, who you hopefully live close enough to if you’re not going to do the aforementioned friend commune thing?

Samantha Jones put her friends first. She was fiercely loyal to them. I feel the same about the friendships I have at this stage of my life, as I wasn’t the best person in 2010 who had hooked up with an equally crappy person, and I not only got better friends since but I also treat them better than I had in the past and can recognize that now. But Samantha not only valued her friends more than men, who she knew were pretty much itinerant: she didn’t wait around. She didn’t let men take the wheel and dictate the narrative.

People hate when women dictate the narrative.

I hate the narrative of people thinking we “have to” cruise dating apps and go through this “effort that doesn’t match the reward” bullshit. I hate the narrative of “I’m SO SAD AND ALONE! My life is not complete!” I hate the narrative of “She only has sex with different men because she just wants them to accept her”, they couldn’t possibly comprehend that many women actually *gasp* love sex.

I didn’t just opt out of dating apps, a whole OTHER thing. I also opted out of all those inane little rules people, but namely cishet women, subject themselves to concerning presenting our real selves and communicating our desires lest we come off as too marriage-hungry or commitmentphobic.

Did any of those mental gymnastics actually help you get a boyfriend or husband? Probably not! If he didn’t make the move and just ask you what’s what, you did.

I got a game to make. Toads to pet. Rants to write. Clients to serve. Friends to shitpost with in the absence of being able to go out in a pandemic. I’m going to film school and starting a production company that already has an interested investor! So hey fellas, you’re in or you’re out. I’m not agonizing over whether you DM me again, or pretending to be more modest than I am lest you call me a slut. Girl don’t have time for that.

Having seen so many instances of men who straight up sabotaged or undermined their wives’ ambitions, if not simply resented them or were spousal equivalents of Bevers from Broad City, I think my reservations in not wanting to jump into a committed relationship in the past were warranted.

I’m not saying you need to wait until everything in your life is absolutely perfect, or that you’ve chased your toughest ambitions first, before you let a long haul partner into your life. But there’s just some things we know we have to do alone. I can’t see myself making a cross-country move after a pandemic with a partner when I toughed the damn thing out by myself, plus paid for film school and the formation of my next company with my own income.

I’m Rachel, not Samantha, and Rachel worked on her intimacy issues in therapy and getting back out there with men. She’d like a guy to share her life with, isn’t as anathemic to the idea of a “real” relationship as she was a decade plus prior, but also isn’t going to wait around for one. She’s got more financial and structural issues to contend with than a fictional character, but otherwise does not need to be married to make her dreams happen.

But on the cusp of my 36th birthday, I find myself seeing Samantha as more relatable and realistic than ever as a childfree entrepreneur who’d go to the ends of the earth for her friends and toads. I could share that fierce degree of love with a man, I’m capable of it. But I know I’ll be okay if it just doesn’t happen. I love my own company and my friends! Being stuck at home in all this time our shitty government has robbed and failed us actually made me more selective now in who I share my time with, but also, it’s a terrible disservice to your friends to refer to itinerant lovers as “just friends”. To borrow a phrase from the lady of the hour which she said to Miranda who described her then-nebulous relationship with Steve as “just friends”: “We’re just friends, I don’t put my dick in you.”

And now I know why so many of these antiquated fucksticks have been so recalcitrant to see women control their own finances: they know what we’d be capable of which is why this mindset persists that women’s lives and accomplishments mean nothing without a romantic relationship, as they don’t like us dictating the narrative in the bedroom or boardroom.

If anything, I’d say they’re even more afraid of women controlling the narrative than any amount of wealth.