WHAT IS THE HOT CITY MOM'S NOT-SO-SECRET WEAPON?
A week after my dinner with Dakota I do something wildly, wildly self-destructive. I go back to the scene of the crime. The scene: the apartment I shared with Asa in Brooklyn. The crime: Heartbreak.
But we'll get to all that later. Right now we're going to focus on location, location, location. And where is the location in question? The beautiful neighborhood of Cobble Hill in the borough of Brooklyn, New York.
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Cobble Hill is sweet and Cobble Hill is safe. She wasn't always a bougie little sugar plum fairy—but that's New York. Neighborhoods evolve and change as frequently as schoolgirl crushes. What's counter-culture one year is mainstream the following year. What's homely one season is the embodiment of "cool" the next season. What's cringe today is a viral trend tomorrow. What was once a humble haven for Italian, Middle Eastern, and Irish immigrants, is now the exclusive stomping ground for the rich Manhattan refugees who oh-so-bravely walked away from their multi-million dollar Tribeca lofts to find a semblance of peace and a few hundred square feet of extra space in cozy, "humble" Cobble Hill, during the global pandemic. What heroes.
Cobble Hill is pretty. Beatific. Holy seeming with her slew of cute old churches peppering the tree-lined streets. She's unlittered, clean like God herself. And she's so civilized and prudent that helicopter parents allow their brats to roam the streets unleashed and unsupervised, even after the turquoise sun softens into a more dangerous dark blue. In the daylight, we don't see many a stray brat on the street, for they are dutifully chained to their school desks, from eight to three, Monday through Friday. The streets in Cobble Hill during school hours are rampant with nannies. Nannies pushing around fresh babies they didn't birth, but will likely raise. In certain wealthy New York circles moms are too busy to mom, you see. Not necessarily because they’ve got big stressful careers to tend to—but because they've got a strict social curriculum to adhere by. Their schedules are laden with status-inducing activities required of all Brooklyn women who long to keep up with the elite Manhattan MILFs. When you flee "the city" for Brooklyn everyone expects you to get frizzy and jiggly—so you need to carve out extra time for things like professional blowouts and cocktail parties and rock-hard-bodies.
Speaking of rock-hard-bodies. For hot, rich city moms, fitness is bible. In certain parts of America, I hear it's the God-fearing women of the church who rule the roost. I don't know about those parts of the country. I know about New York. And in this depraved town, it's the scale-fearing women of reformer pilates who take reign over the Concrete Jungle.
But how does one achieve such an aspirational body after bearing three kids and slurping down martinis every single night for the last twenty years?
Cue in harrowing workouts, one of the most time-consuming activities of the New York MILF. And any MILF worth her Himalayan sea salt ensures her abs remain visible when wearing her trendy floor-length cut gown by doing what she does best: hiring help, baby. Cue in the personal trainer. New York women like this will passionately tell you, over their morning ritual of $32 eggs and gluten-free toast, again and again, how "lost" they'd be without their trainers. (They say the same thing about their eyebrow ladies).
The personal trainer is a Cobble Hill mom's not-so-secret weapon. They will custom-design her a meal plan and workout routine so rigid she's guaranteed to always be too sore to perform oral sex on her husband and will ensure she goes into fight or flight after catching a whiff of spaghetti carbonara.
For a hot second, it was very on-trend to have a hot, young muscle man as your personal trainer. Extra points if he was Latin and well-endowed in that way where you don't have to *see* it to *know* it. But that, like everything in life, got old after a while. Too much pressure to look cute whilst sweating and whatnot. So the trainer trend shifted.
Cue in the no-nonsense blonde. Think Tracey Anderson, Taryn Toomey. The type-A toe-head fitness aficionado notorious for sculpting the svelte bodies of type-A toe-headed celebrities, like Gwyneth and Madonna. (TRIGGER WARNING: TYPE-A SKINNY BLONDES FEATURED IN THE IMAGE BELOW/PROCEED WITH CAUTION/KEEP SCROLLING AT YOUR OWN RISK/ZARABARRIE INC IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR EMOTIONAL DAMAGE).
But the problem with these women is the very thing that drew the MILFs to them, is the very thing that destroys their dynamic: their blonde ambition. Blonde ambition always succeeds, because, unlike non-blonde female ambition, straight men aren't repelled by it. And straight men are still the ones calling the shots, despite what internet feminism insists. (You do know all those "feminist" digital publications are run by bald old white dudes, right?) Anyway, the no-nonsense blonde quickly realizes she's on to something, gets signed by a big-five agency like CAA, and does what she was born to do: brand herself. Because she's small and blonde and cute and that's what America wants of its women, her personal brand skyrockets! Suddenly she's too busy hawking cold-pressed protein bars and exorbitantly priced athleisure and organic vegan diet pills to train the non-famous (rich bitches and socialities don't count as famous, nor do reality stars. Only supermodels, actors, and singers count).
So what's a trophy wife to do when her beloved trainer's blonde ambition gets in the way of her #fitnessgoals? She hires a lesbian trainer, naturally.
The lesbian personal trainer is almost always what sapphic circles often refer to as a "soft butch." This means she's "masculine" enough to not tempt the MILF's limp-dicked husband—but not so masculine that she'd scare the old, stuffy Chanel Number 5 ladies who lunch uptown. You know the type: short hair slick with products, not a trace of makeup albeit the occasional lick of mascara twice a year on her birthday. Used to teach SoulCycle in the West Village, charmed her straight, sexually deprived clientele with her irresistible lesbian swag until one day she realized she wasn't being paid her worth. She's as ambitious as any New York woman, only her ambition isn't blonde (by which I mean "straight"), so her brand isn't as "accessible." Jillian Michaels didn't become Jillian Michaels overnight if you catch my drift. It took time. It took strategy.
It took starring on a problematic reality show (remember the Biggest Loser?) to create her empire. The lesbian trainer knows this, so while she's working hard to build that Instagram following from the ground up, she decides it would be more lucrative to work one-on-one with the clients who love her motivational pep talks as they cycle their problems away on stationary bikes. "I'll cum to you," she smirks into the MILF's eyes when she tells her after class that she's venturing out on her own. The MILF will shiver below the belt, but won't know why. The lesbian trainer knows exactly what she's doing. Using your sexuality to get ahead is not just a game for twenty-five-year-olds with big tits, contrary to popular belief. The next thing the lesbian trainer knows she's traipsing down Park Avenue, wads of cash in stuffed into the pockets of her brand-new cargo pants.
The MILF never misses a session with her lesbian personal trainer, ever. Partly because having toned arms equals power and toned arms don't happen by magic—but mainly because they're desperately seeking something I refer to as, Lesbian Trainer Validation.™
Lesbian trainer validation draws parallels to male validation, only it's better. Why? Because we all intrinsically know that certain ~swaggy gay women~ are as toxic as straight men in the superficiality department but intellectually they're far superior animals. So if a hot dyke hits on you it means two very positive things: you're both hot and smart. Which feels like Christmas. On steroids.
All of this can be very overwhelming to a sexually-repressed straight MILF. Especially if she's the type who was too uptight in the salad days of her "wild" twenties to experiment with the iteration of drugs that cause most women to at least wonder what it would feel like to dip a toe in the bisexual waters. And when the lesbian trainer comes cannonballing into her straight and narrow orbit; aggressively holding doors open for her like a perfect gentleman but intensely listening to her bitch about her problems like her best girlfriend; ogling her cleavage like her hot young college-aged pool boy in the Hamptons; kicking her ass into the best shape of its life like the dom boss of her deepest pornographic fantasies—she's suddenly questioning everything she's ever known!
The dichotomy of a lone person possessing both masculine and feminine energies so unapologetically disrupts the ecosystem of a MILF. She's suddenly confused. And confusion morphs into erotic desire, as it always does. After all: we're sexually attracted to what we can't quite understand, to people who expand our small worlds and show us new ways in which to live. This is when the sex dreams begin. Suddenly it's not Leonardo Dicaprio throwing you against a wall, having his way with you, you perfect little slut. It's Lea the lesbian trainer scissoring you in the steam room your pre-diabetic husband with sleep apnea bought you as a push present two children ago, you fit little whore.
Sometimes the sex dreams come to fruition; the MILF has a hot affair with her Lesbian Personal Trainer. While I wouldn't say it's a common phenomenon, I wouldn't deem it uncommon, either. Sociologist and New York Times Best Selling author, Wednesday Martin, talks about this in the opening of her masterpiece book, Untrue: Why Nearly Everything We Believe About Women, Lust, and Infidelity Is Wrong and How the New Science Can Set Us Free.
I'm not a sociologist nor am I an NYT Best Seller (not yet)— but I've borne witness to the MILF/lesbian trainer affair and I don't recommend it. Not because I covet thy neighbor's lesbian trainer for myself, I don't. As a card-carrying lipstick lesbian with an honorary master's degree from Harvard in the art of Sapphic Seduction—I could have her if I *really* wanted her. Plus, I don't fetishize my own kind, that's not how it works. The reason I don't recommend said affair is because it always ends in disaster for all parties involved. What straight MILFs don't realize is that hot lesbians are an endangered species, scarce as Javan Rhinoceros, which according to savetherhino.org have a population of approximately 76.
By which I mean, hot lesbians are a breed of queer woman who amasses lots of attention in the girl/girl scene. I hate to break it to you: but not all gays want a middle-aged married straight woman with kids. Especially the hot lez trainer who probably has a young hot queer influencer girlfriend or three. By which I really mean: just because she winked at you during that last set doesn't mean she's in love with you, sweetheart. She loves your money, honey. By which I really, really mean: Don't blow up your life for your lesbian trainer. Not yet. Not until it's real. Not until at the very least, she goes down on you, and makes you scream into a motel pillow as it suddenly dawns on you that mindblowing sex is what's been missing all of these years. Not until you sheepishly confess to your West Side shrink: "holy shit! ORGASMS ARE WHAT MAKE LIFE WORTH LIVING, NOT A FULLY PAID-OFF AMEX! I'd rather spend the night cumming in a motel 6 in JERSEY than suffer through another snoring, sex-less night with my husband in the most luxurious five-star hotel in PARIS." If and when this happens, then I totally think you should go ahead and blow up your life, because even when the lesbian trainer turns out to be as insufferable of a player as the worst douche-bag on Wall Street—at least you'll have been struck with a powerful erotic epiphany. Embodying the knowledge that good sex is the ultimate thrill will carry you through the harrowing after-shock of a life explosion.
When Cobble Hill women aren't dutifully squatting for their dyke trainers, they're doing far more menial-albeit-status-important things. Like pretending to care about the theme of some charity event they're chairing, even though they couldn't care less about the fucking theme, they just need to prove to the rest of the board room bitches that they're more than just a pretty face—they're smart, opinionated women with esteemed degrees!—which is actually true. New York isn't like Hollywood. Hollywood is the promised land for the pretty. In New York it's not enough to be pretty, you have to be smart too. The most shallow man on the planet can't have just any cute bimbo on his arm if he wants to be top dog at the firm. He needs someone gorgeous but fiercely intellectual, too. And New York is full of gorgeous intellectual women. But sexism is alive and well thus many a MILF is happy to relinquish her promising career to manage both her and her husband's hectic social calendar, to spend her days attempting to get her offspring accepted into whatever private school is hot at that moment, to spend her free time sweating the wine-bloat away—because hey! Her life is glamorous and bursting with opportunity and travel and culture and trips to literary institutions and museums and the ballet and she's finally made it in NEW YORK. Only now she's intellectually starved and full of holes—but what's a girl to do? There's no turning back at this stage in the game—do you know how hard I've worked to get this life? The only thing to do is keep calm and carry on, channel the razor-sharp brain into being the kind of woman who behaves impossibly in fundraising board meetings, the kind of woman who will plank until her stomach muscles shake like a category-five earthquake because at least that's a goddamn challenge, the kind of woman who fantasizes about her hot lesbian personal trainer because her husband hasn't been able to get it up in years. I mean, girl. Let's get real. How do you think the streets stay so clean in Cobble Hill? It's NEW YORK CITY, arguably one of the dirtiest places in America, if not the world! The streets are clean because sexually and intellectually deprived housewives with no housework to do are pissed that despite having it all—the three-story townhouse on the quiet treelined street—the "county" "cottage" in Bridge Hampton—the kids registered in the best single-sex schools on the Upper East Side—the banker—the Birkin—they're still bored to tears—so screw it, darling. Let's start a beautification of BROOKLYN campaign because you know, that'll kill time.
Williamsburg, where I've been staying with Violet is in the same borough but it's a very different Brooklyn. Williamsburg isn't about MILFs. It's about rats. Literal and figurative rats.
TO BE CONTINUED.....
