As is perhaps appropriate at a party for a sex app, there was a surprise Woody.
Woody Allen was once a dependable fixture on the nightlife scene. But since #MeToo brought the unproven allegations against him back into focus, the director has been notably missing from the cocktail party circuit.
So it was a shock on Tuesday night to find the “Manhattan” man and his wife Soon Yi Previn amidst the pigs in blankets at a bash at the Upper East Side home of literary legend Daphne Merkin.
Allen, who cheerfully chatted with other guests, is an old pal of Merkin’s, and she famously wrote a controversial profile of Previn for New York Magazine in 2018.
The party marked the launch of a heavyweight literary magazine made by sex app Feeld, which bills itself as “the dating app for the curious.” The app’s search settings offer its members prospective sexual configurations including “MF,” “FF,” “MM,” and “MF,” as well as “FFM,” “MMF,” “MFM,” and so on through to the more ambitious “MFMF,” “MMMM,” and, of course, “FFFF,” plus “watching” and, perhaps counterintuitively, “celibate.”
The first issue of AFM, which stands interchangeably for either “A F**king Magazine” or “A Feeld Magazine,” features work by big hitters including Jazmine Hughes, Allison P. Davis and “In The Cut” author Susanna Moore. It’s edited by the equally grand Haley Mlotek and Maria Dimitrova.
Allen didn’t stay for long — he’s 88, after all — but the party raged on with readings from James Ivory and Tony Tulathimutte, who quipped that he was only able to write about the first issue’s theme, the pursuit of happiness, because “I’m a fiction writer.” Merkin herself also gave a tantalizing reading, riffing on Marlon Brando and Marilyn Monroe.
The event was put together by PR star Kaitlin Phillips.
Also there: Candace Bushnell, Molly Jong Fast, Paula Froelich, David Salle, Emma Cline and Feeld CEO Ana Kirova.
The bi-annual magazine is available now on newsstands and at ReadAFM.com for $24.