Last night, at the two-story Flatiron District club Taj, about 120 twentysomething men and women participated in a little vanity exercise called "Fashion Meets Finance." (Click here to view our photogallery.) It was exactly what the name implied: from 5:30 p.m. until approximately 9:30 p.m., men who held jobs in the financial services industry were invited to come and mingle with women who worked in the fashion industry. It went as you'd expect—guys we talked to were fond of discussing the "talent" in the room; the second question out of most of the girls' mouths was invariably "Where do you work?"—but conversations we had with two of the participants in particular summed up the affair, as well as the State of Gender Relations in Manhattan, better than we could ever hope to. So we'll let their words do most of the talking.

Dinesh Patel, 26

We first met Dinesh as he was standing around with a buddy of his looking kind of bored. How's it going, we casually asked? "Awesome," came the surprisingly peppy response. "When you're wasted, everything is awesome."

Dinesh works at something called the Funding Desk at Goldman Sachs. We told him we'd heard of Goldman Sachs, but were unfamiliar with what, exactly, the "funding desk" was. He laughed. "I crunch numbers, man. I try to make us money."

Dinesh Patel, we should mention here, is actually his real name. Most people were hesitant about offering up identifying details. Not Dinesh.

Dinesh, 26, has been crunching numbers and trying to make money at the funding desk for two years, but his real passion is "making movies." We asked him why he and his buddy were standing alone on the dance floor, and not talking to any of the girls.

"There's like one 10 here and a bunch of 5's," he said. We surveyed the scene and said we thought his assessment was a little harsh. We asked why he thought more attractive girls didn't show up.

"Here's the thing," he said, as if he was about to let us in on the secret to eternal happiness or something. "The thing with hot girls is that they almost always have low self-esteem. Most of them probably don't have the guts to come to something like this because they don't want to be rejected. They're scared of putting themselves out there and scared that no one will talk to them, which would confirm all of the insecurities they have about themselves. It's easier to just not put yourself out there."

And guys don't have the same insecurities about themselves? Dinesh looked around the room. "All the guys here work at places like JP Morgan and Merrill Lynch," he explained. (ed: Not true. Most of the dudes we talked to worked at firms we'd never heard of, but whatever.) "They don't have to worry about approaching people and getting rejected, 'cause girls will always come up to them. It's like the whole system has been flipped."

We asked him why he even bothered coming tonight, if he thought that the girls wouldn't be up to par. "I actually don't know why I came, to be honest," he said. "I know that if I go to a club tonight, I can find a hot girl and take her home. It's not a big deal. By coming here...maybe I get some stories out of it?"

"Bridget," 23

Bridget—not her real name—is a cute, size 6 blond who went to a good school (Trinity) and who now works in fashion merchandising as an account executive. She was at the party with two friends, both of whom had comparable jobs, body types, and educational backgrounds. Bridget was siting with one of them in a booth off to the side of the dance floor when we sat down to chat.

We asked why she and her friend were sitting alone and not talking to the boys, many of whom they both described as "cute." "Men here (in New York, generally, but also presumably at the event) are so fickle. SO fickle," she explained. "It's because they all think they can have anyone they want at any time and then when they find someone who is actually good to them they don't even realize it. They're only concerned with finding someone better."

We asked Bridget if she felt she was one of the good ones. She nodded her head. Had she recently had a bad experience with a Fickle New York Guy? Another nod.

"Like what the fuck?," she continued on. "Seriously. What. The. Fuck. Like me and my friend have literally had to go up to every guy and initiate conversation. What is wrong with men? Why is everyone such a pussy? Write that down. Men are PUSSIES with a capital P. They're scared of women! They don't know how to talk to us, or hit on us, or do anything. And then it's like we have to be the men, you know? If you're a man, be a man and take advantage of it. Go up to women. Talk to women. Oh my God, what's gonna happen, you're gonna get rejected and your ego can't take it? You know what? We get rejected all the time. Deal with it. You're a big boy. Stop being so fucking insecure. It's so fucking frustrating."

Bridget paused to take a sip of her Stella. She let out an audible sigh.

"I'm 23, you know? And it's almost like I see no hope. I'm not ugly—do you think I'm ugly?" We told Bridget she was by no means ugly. "I mean I'm not the most gorgeous girl around, but I'm definitely cute. Like, what the fuck? I seriously think I may have to move to the suburbs if I ever want to find a long-term relationship. It's like you're never skinny enough, or slutty enough, or hot enough for guys here. It's such bullshit. They all want to fuck models. And then when they get bored of fucking one girl they move on to another one. Even the ones who have no shot in hell of fucking models delude themselves into thinking they're eventually going to fuck models or whatever. The delusional model-fuckers are even worse than the actual model-fuckers."

We suggested to Bridget that, at 23, she was way too young to be so cynical about the dating scene. And also that this event maybe wasn't filled with the type of guys she was hypothetically into? She agreed with the latter point, but not with the former point. "I'm 23, yeah, and of course that's young. But you can never be too young here. I mean don't get me wrong—I like to fuck and I have fun and party as much as anyone. But I have serious doubts about this city sometimes."

A friend of Bridget's came over bearing a gift—a glass of Chardonnay. She motioned to a trio of guys in suits jabbing away at their Blackberries and suggested to Bridget that they go and introduce themselves. One of those guys, it turned out, was Dinesh. "Make sure you print this tomorrow," Bridget said as she stood up. "People need to know."

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