Cocktail Girls
"Right now, I'm concentrating on my career..."
Happy hour, Friday night. It's the end of another long week and the bar is packed with droves of disconcerted academics and smug city workers. All are delighted to have two days of aimless bliss ahead of them. Two women sit in their usual spot by the front bay window. The blonde is busy pressing keys on her mobile with her thumb. A half drunk vodka martini stands to attention by her right hand. The other, a dark haired woman, sips her Margarita and licks the salt from her lips.
"What's the excuse this time?", Ms Margarita asks, her tone soured by the lime.
"The usual", Ms Martini replies, snapping her mobile shut. "The child's come down with a cold. She can't leave him. Something about this fever may explode the thermometer. What I don't get is we know she won't come yet week after week we have to be put through this charade."
"That's coupledom for you."
"You're here!"
"Believe me, when you've been married as long as I have, you'll want the night off!"
Ms Martini laughed.
"When did we get so boring? It wasn't so long ago that we were in our twenties and you could call someone up and within 20 minutes they'd be with you for a drink. Now we have to co-ordinate our diaries months in advance just to say hi."
"Sorry I'm late!", Ms Bellini pants, her minature waistline belying her five years sub-thirty before self-content with Ben and Jerry's, fine wine and M&S dinner for two has set in. "I can't stay long, I'm afraid. I'm meeting Matt at eight."
"Matt? I thought you were seeing David!"
"I thought it was Fred!", Ms Margarita interjects.
"Oh girls keep up!" Ms Bellini pouts with the petulance of a nine year old who has just realized that her mother hasn't been following the playground gossip.
"Sweetie, it was only a month ago that you were raving about Chris," Ms Margarita asserts.
"He's still on the scene". Ms Bellini non-chatently replies. "I think he wants us to get serious but I'm not so sure. I know I should make a decision but I'm enjoying dating. I feel like I'm getting my revenge on every guy who made me wait for the phone to ring."
"And so you should," Ms Martini concedes. "You are after all just following your sexual career."
"My what?"
"Your sexual career. We all have one. We start off, say 16 years old for arguments sake, with zero partners. We then embark on a series of relationships until we eventually settle on a long term monogamous relationship with one partner. This typically happens in the mid to late twenties, though this differs from country to country. We stay with this partner until death does you part and so the last years of life you could be back to zero partners again. Sometimes the career path may alter before old age, for instance you may separate, divorce or be widowed, and so you may have a blip whereby you may have one or more partners in a year but it usually resolves back to one partner again. We're really quite predictable."
"But what about our parents?" Ms Margarita asks. "I can't see them having more than one partner in their entire lives!"
"Well, there are generational differences. I recently read a survey on sexual behaviours in the UK and it showed that despite having a longer period to form sexual relationships, those in the 45 to 59 age group had fewer lifetime partners than those in the 25 to 44 age group. Also, there are differences between men and women with a higher proportion of men particularly in the older age groups reporting 10 or more lifetime partners than the women."
"How is that?" Ms Bellini lifts her chin inquisitively.
"Could it be that older men can be with younger women?" Ms Margarita muses. "That would mean that in the older age groups, men have a choice of women their own age and those younger whereas for women, the choice is restricted to men their own age."
"Possibly. But more likely because there are social constraints on women reporting their sexual behaviours. Women are far more likely to underreport their sexual partners whereas men are likely to boast or exaggerate their sexual prowlness. It's called social desirability bias."
"Okay," Ms Bellini surmises. "You're saying that I'm at the start of my sexual career."
"Yes, and the path you take right now takes you through your experimental stage. So you shouldn't worry too much about whether you have found Mr Right yet, you'll settle down with someone soon enough."
Just then, Miss Recessionista enters the bar and proceeds to the counter to get her usual glass of tap water. She air kisses a bunch of tittering women. As though on a timer, all heads turn in a synchronised motion and stare at the cocktail girls.
"What has she said?" Ms Margarita glances at the women.
Ms Martini slides the olive along the stick into her mouth. "They're trying to work out how I'm with The Boy. They're probably saying what does he see in me and how he left Miss Endless legs for an older woman."
"How did you do it?"
Arching her eyebrow, Ms Martini responds, "Wouldn't you like to know!"
©2009 Catherine Heffernan
