Gossip, relationships, clothes: So where's the sex?

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I've never had much interest in "Sex and the City," though I've been forced to see parts of it. This happens when you live with females. At unexpected moments, usually the bottom of the ninth, they take over the television. Suddenly, the image would switch to four women in expensive footwear drinking cosmopolitans and talking about the subject that gave the show its name.I never lasted long, though it did teach me one truth. I had no idea women talked about men's, um, things so much. I use that word because newspapers are more circumspect than HBO. Which brings up another reason women like the show. Deep down, they love to hear every non-circumspect detail.At least that's what my daughter, now 20, told me. The show, she said, is like listening in on someone else's most intimate gossip.I asked my wife if that's why it's a hit. Yes. And one other thing."It's about the clothes," she said.She may be right. The logo on "Sex and the City" DVDs turns out to be a clothing hanger. I know this because I borrowed a disc last week. I was ordered to. With the movie coming out, my editor asked me to give a male perspective on the show. He pointed me to a female co-worker who owned all six seasons. I took one disc. She made me vow in blood to bring it back intact.She was extra-hyped because she was about to see a preview of the new movie with a colleague, and they said it would be a "religious" experience. I guess I kind of felt that way when "Terminator 2" came out, but it's different. They had rocket-propelled grenades in "Terminator 2."At about 9 p.m. I got ready for my screening. I found my 16-year-old son watching a show analyzing how many G-forces result from a wrestling body slam."Hey, Sport. You want to watch an episode of 'Sex and the City' with me?"He asked if I'd become gay.I told him it was a work assignment. He got up to leave, saying he'd briefly seen parts of the show when his sister turned it on. "It's just girls talking to each other the whole time," he told me. "It's mad boring."I randomly picked an episode from season four called, "What's sex got to do with it."It began with Carrie, who's played by Sarah Jessica Parker ... but I'm just going to stick with their character names for simplicity.She's about to do it with some shirtless hunk who is supposedly a jazz musician but looks more like a male model, which I think is part of the show's appeal. It's eye candy for women.Cut to the four girls having cosmopolitans at a bar.Carrie is excitedly telling the others that last night, she had the most intense, um, climax, of her life. But she says it's odd, because she usually has to be in love for that to happen.I began to feel like I was eavesdropping on something too personal. Women love things that are too personal, but it weirded me out a bit. And do women really tell each other such things? I've never known a man to tell another what an intense, um, you know, that they had. If some guy tried, I'd tell him to knock it off.Then Samantha, the most adventurous of the four, says she's experimenting with a woman. But it's not just about the sex, she says; she feels a connection. It's about the relationship.Wait a minute. I thought "Sex and the City" was about the sex.The plot thickens when Miranda, the tall one, decides to go on a date strike and starts buying pastry as a replacement for men, explaining that every once in a while, a girl has to indulge herself, at which point there are quick cuts of the others all doing it. Get it?The four end up together the next morning having coffee, which got me wondering: Don't they have jobs? I got uncomfortable again as they shared every lurid detail. Come on, ladies, act more like gentlemen.Then came a big plot twist. Despite Carrie's sex being "mind-blowing," she has issues. They all do. Why? Because there's something not quite right about the "relationship."Men don't really like that word. I thought this was one woman's show that wouldn't like it, either. But by the time the episode was over, they'd used it about 20 times. Maybe that's the true female porn. Instead of just doing it, as is the case in male porn, they do it and then obsess about the "relationship."Back to Carrie with her shirtless jazz musician -- the one she had the mind-blowing climax with. But as he cozies up to her for another, she demurs and says, "Could we just sit and talk?"Now I was more uncomfortable than ever. Men hate those six words. But I could tell this would engage female viewers even more than the sex scenes.Carrie later tells the others the sex is great, but that's not enough -- she needs it to be more of a relationship.Cut to the dark-haired one named Charlotte, who had separated from her husband and was now with him under the sheets, trying to fire things back together.He tells her he's never been so aroused. Actually, he was more graphic than that. I was relieved my son had declined to watch this with me.Anyway, Charlotte suddenly decides she wants more than this."I'm tired of being married to your winkie," she declares. She actually doesn't say "winkie," but close enough. She adds: "I'm a person. And this is supposed to be a relationship."There's that word again.She stomps away. But later, her husband returns to her apartment to say, "Will you remarry me?"Yick.But it finally strikes me why women like "Sex and the City" more than men do. It's not a sex romp after all. Beneath all the talk over cosmopolitans about guys' winkies, it's a romance novel. I don't think "Relationships and the City" would have had the same ring, but that's what this is really about.The episode ends with Carrie symbolically strolling out of her jazz guy's life, down a Manhattan street in search of something more meaningful.With relief, I turned back to see how many G-forces result from a body slam.(mpatinkin(at)projo.com)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)