INTO THE WILD!
Itching for sex after COVID-19, NYC singles are revving up for ‘the whoring ’20s’
A few weeks ago, Ashwin Deshmukh saw something he hadn’t in over a year: “Uhhhh it’s happening. Host is escorting a couple out of a soho restaurant for bathroom shenanigans. They met outside an hour ago,” he tweeted.
Twitter had one response: New York is back.
The bathroom hookup is just the start of a wave of debauchery that’s about to hit the city.
“People are just ready to go,” Deshmukh, a partner at hot spots Short Stories and Williamsburg Pizza, told The Post. Right now, there is an “infinite demand” for partying, he said.
Some have dubbed it “slutty summer” or “the whoring ’20s.” Others have proclaimed that we’re in for a “Shot Girl Summer,” inspired by the viral Megan Thee Stallion song, “Hot Girl Summer.” No matter what you call it, 1967’s summer of love isn’t going to have anything on 2021. With all New Yorkers over 16 eligible to be vaccinated and bars and restaurants opening, city dwellers have one thing planned for this summer: getting it on.
“This summer is about having lots of sex,” Serena Kerrigan, who runs the Instagram dating show “Let’s F - - king Date,” told The Post. “Everyone’s getting vaccinated, everyone’s horny, everyone’s sick of virtual [dating].”
After more than a year of crafting carefully worded messages on Hinge and Tinder, old-fashioned, in-person “spontaneous” meets will be preferred, the 27-yearold said. The ability to meet someone at a bar or on the subway had “been virtually extinguished, and that’s going to be coming back,” she said. “Everyone has something in common now. ‘How excited are you that the pandemic’s over?’ can literally be your opening line.”
Sexual releases are historically the
“
I have no interest in something serious. My goal is to meet as many people as possible.”
— Evan Silverman, 24, on his plans for the summer, which don’t include getting into a long-term relationship
norm after pandemics, said Nicholas Christakis, a sociologist, physician and
Yale professor.
“Typically, if you look at centuries [with] plagues, there’s a party at the end,” he told The Post. “When the epidemics of the bubonic plague ended, there was dancing in the streets.”
Still, Christakis — who says that we’re not at the “beginning of the end, but rather the end of the beginning” of the pandemic — urges revelers to practice “harm reduction”: Hang out with vaccinated people, be outdoors and keep your social circle small.
But once the festive floodgates open, it might be challenging to maintain caution.
The season is “going to be great because everyone’s going to be vaccinated,” said Olivia Brewer, a Westchester resident who was getting drinks with her friend Juliana Mora at the Red Lion in the Village Saturday night. The women, who are both in the process of getting vaccinated, discussed their plans for “hot girl summer,” as Mora, 23, called it.
“[I want to] just kind of be free. We’re less afraid. We’re ready,” she told The Post.
“I think that my goal is to go out all the time,” said Brewer, also 23.
And once the weather is warm and the drinks are flowing, it’s safe to say that the masks are going to drop.
“I will be happy to meet new people,” Tony Manokhin, 24, told The Post, while out at Village eatery Carroll Place. He went on several socially distant dates last summer, but the pandemic often got in the way of taking things to the next level.
But now, he said, “This is the time when both parties are going to be OK with [hooking up].”
But don’t confuse slutty summer with cuffing season.
“Being cooped up for such a long time, I think I don’t have the desire to be in a relationship. In the short term, I have no interest in something serious,” said Evan Silverman, 24. “My goal is to meet as
many people as possible.”
Carli, a 24-year-old assistant who declined to give her last name for privacy reasons, went through a breakup in November and hasn’t dated much since.
“I want to be single the whole entire summer, just because I did just get out of a twoyear relationship,” she said. “Maybe next fall I’d consider dating again, but I definitely want this summer to be, like, a time.”
Things are also picking up at local sex clubs. Melissa Vitale and Tiana North, who goes by Tiana GlittersaurusRex, headed to NSFW last weekend for a “play party.”
North, who runs a nonprofit that benefits sex workers, is eager, but selective, as she returns to the dating scene. “I’ve always been this girl who is go with the flow, down for whatever, jump into the orgy pile,” North, 32, told The Post. “Now, it has to be the right orgy pile, the right connection.”
Vitale, 27, predicts an “explosion of sexuality.” She’s noticed a huge attitude shift in the city.
“We’ve all been so starved for socialization. The same New Yorker who might have told you to f - - k off 14 months ago when you said hi is going to say hi back now,” the publicist said. “I go to the grocery store I see guys flirting, I go to the liquor store I see people flirting.”
Right now, many COVID safety regulations are still keeping people distanced at indoor locales, said Philip Zelonky, who owns Noir NY, a Chelsea club.
“I think people are waiting for the restrictions to be lifted,” and once they are, “it will help with a lot more intermingling and vibing people out,” he said. “They want to let loose — they want to go crazy”
For Vitale, getting down and dirty isn’t just a want, but a collective need.
“There’s going to be such a liberation, it’s going to be a big party everywhere you go,” she said. “Just the fact that we’ve survived this, we’ve persevered.”