Is this what you want?

When asked if they’ve been arranging dates on the apps they’ve been swiping at, all say not one date, but two or three: “You can’t be stuck in one lane … There’s always something better.” “If you had a reservation somewhere and then a table at Per Se opened up, you’d want to go there,” Alex offers.

“Guys view everything as a competition,” he elaborates with his deep, reassuring voice. “Who’s slept with the best, hottest girls?” With these dating apps, he says, “you’re always sort of prowling. You could talk to two or three girls at a bar and pick the best one, or you can swipe a couple hundred people a day—the sample size is so much larger. It’s setting up two or three Tinder dates a week and, chances are, sleeping with all of them, so you could rack up 100 girls you’ve slept with in a year.”

I was a teenager in the 80s. This was before "apps" or even the internet. It was before one carried a phone around in one's pocket. But it was certainly after it was considered normal to "have sex" with anyone for any reason or no reason. And in my neck of the woods, it was already a decade after everyone stopped even considering marriage to be a real thing anymore. It was already history... ancient and long dead and forgotten history.

But I can't imagine, really, how all this must seem to young women and girls today. I remember feminists in the 70s talking about how men look at women as pieces of meat. But I think those ladies of the early days would not be able to comprehend what their "free sex" revolution hath wrought.

Seriously, is this all you want in life? Really?

Dan and Marty, also Alex’s roommates in a shiny high-rise apartment building near Wall Street, can vouch for that. In fact, they can remember whom Alex has slept with in the past week more readily than he can.

“Brittany, Morgan, Amber,” Marty says, counting on his fingers. “Oh, and the Russian—Ukrainian?”

“Ukrainian,” Alex confirms. “She works at—” He says the name of a high-end art auction house. Asked what these women are like, he shrugs. “I could offer a résumé, but that’s about it … Works at J. Crew; senior at Parsons; junior at Pace; works in finance … ”

“We don’t know what the girls are like,” Marty says.

“And they don’t know us,” says Alex.

...

“I sort of play that I could be a boyfriend kind of guy,” in order to win them over, “but then they start wanting me to care more … and I just don’t.”

~