“Myth New York”: Flirting, Singles and Love in NYC – Travel

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There’s another reason people leave New York: loneliness. The whole thing then has something of a chicken and egg dilemma: who was here first? The people who don’t want to commit? Or the people who sit alone in front of the television and watch the classic channel “Harry and Sally”? The intersection could be large.

An American woman I met here recently held a half-hour monologue in the diner. It was actually about four men she’s broadly intimate with: from an email friendship to having sex in Central Park. That sounds like a passionate single life, finally. But she now wants to emigrate to Germany – her place of longing for relational commitment.

At least once, New York was the alternative to this. In the “Museum of Sex” visitors will not only find a well-stocked shop, but also an exhibition Photos by Bill Bernstein. Bernstein was a party photographer before this profession became a hobby for youngsters with a bottom hairstyle. In the seventies he took photos in “Studio 54”, in “Le Clique” and in “GG’s Barnum Room”. His black and white photos are a portrait of the disco era. Most common motif: couples copulating on the dance floor. Whereby “couple” does not describe a long-term state, but a fleeting, sexually charged moment.

There are photos of men and women, photos of men with men, photos of men in women’s clothes, and photos of women with penis. “These pioneers created cross-border communities of opportunity and joie de vivre and not only revolutionized their own present, but also paved the way for our future,” writes author and pop culture expert Barry Walters. Sexual self-determination and freedom are part of New York’s identity – but they are also part of the vast trivia about the city. In the museum shop you can buy white tennis socks with “Fuck my socks off” embroidered with black thread.

An American and a British meet

Anyone who never visits the museum as a tourist can at least remember the following fun fact for a possible New York flirt: The Library of Congress in Washington has been translating individual editions of the Playboy in braille.

The rapprochement in a city where everyone potentially comes from a different cultural area is fraught with pitfalls – a miracle that there are so many couples. As a newcomer, one observes a situation like this on the subway: An American and a British woman are talking, they have obviously only just met. It’s about politics (“All of us are racists. That’s what we’ve learned.”) And extremely private (after a one-night stand he briefly feared that he would be a father, but was just fine again, phew) .

Then the language comes to the bands of their own youth – and with one sentence they tear open a rift that is more difficult to bridge than the Atlantic between Great Britain and America: “Take That? I’ve never even heard of them!”