Member-only story
Having a sex life in New York City comes at a cost — you don’t sleep; not if you have a job. It seems to me that having erotic adventures is really just another privilege of the rich, who either don’t work or make their own hours. If you’re in the tier of people with a 9–5 job, well, I can see why having a predictable, boring, domestic relationship makes sense — because you don’t have time for anything else.
The fantasy of American life is that we’re all free to choose whatever lifestyle we want, whenever we want it — but of course, if we actually analyze the structure (the economic determinants) of our lives, it’s usually evident that we’re anything but free. When I’m on the subway, having slept 3 or 4 hours — I’m not really free to do anything but cling onto my waking consciousness, like I’m hanging to a rockface. I can get off the train, but I’ll lose my job; I could sleep in on Monday, but I’ll lose my job.
If I met the love of my life at 6:55am and had to choose between getting off the train and going to work… well maybe I’d get off the train, but it would come at a tremendous anxiety-cost; I could ignore reality for a little while — but eventually, I’d have to buy groceries or pay rent. I could leave my economic reality to enjoy a romantic fantasy, but only for a little while.
One of the reasons we worship tech culture is that it produces wealth for its creators and proprietors; in a circular fashion, tech is successful because its successful — we use sleek phones and apps partly because we’ve all bought into the narrative of the multi-billion dollar IPO success story; subconsciously, Americans have been induced into feeling good about participating in the creation of massive wealth for others. Even if a vast, vast majority of us don’t escape economic constraints, we comforted by the idea that some people (even a tiny handful) do.
