LOVE IN THE TIME OF ALGORITHMS
How Cigarettes After Sex continue to mine love and lust—but now they’ve hit the big time
“Who’s the slut of New York?” asks a disheveled man with a wonky grin, holding a cardboard sign that asks the same question in Sharpie.
I’m sitting with Greg Gonzalez, the singer of Cigarettes After Sex, on a bench in Tompkins Square Park in the East Village, and before either of us has a chance to respond, he answers his own question.
“Definitely him, not her,” he says, gesturing to Gonzalez and then at me. Gonzalez chuckles good-naturedly before the man launches into a just-kidding explanation: Apparently the real slut of New York is actually Brad Pitt because he has “a tiny microdick.” Well, that clears that up. Certainly a novel opener to segue into asking for spare change. Dollars forfeited, he slips back into the lunchtime melee to try his luck elsewhere.
“Never heard that before, and he mostly had me,” Gonzalez says. “Until that weird micro-dick thing. The other stuff—there’s some kind of poetry there.”