by Candace Bushnell

June 16, 2004

People often ask me if I really had three friends like Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte on Sex and the City. I did, indeed, have lots of girlfriends, and, like the girls on the TV show, they all occasionally had their "Samantha" moments. I'll never forget the evening when my "Miranda" called me from the bedroom of a fancy apartment on the Upper East Side in Manhattan (this was before everyone had cell phones), and demanded that I get over there immediately.
     "But why?" I asked. It was eleven p.m.
     "Because I just had sex with a professional hockey player in a cedar closet! Have you ever had sex in a cedar closet?" she asked. "The smell is amazing. You've got to come over here right now and try it!"
     Well, I have to say I passed on that adventure, along with the opportunity to go to a party where the men were supposed to wear diapers and the women dressed as nurses. My feeling was that if you somehow ended up being married for long enough, this would probably happen to you anyway.      But old men in diapers is not the point. The answer is, yes, I was lucky to have fantastic girlfriends like the wonderful characters on Sex and the City. When I began writing the "Sex and the City" column in 1994 (I can hardly believe it was ten years ago), my girlfriends were my inspiration. We were always having bizarre, crazy and (sometimes) heartbreaking experiences with men, and through it all, we were always there for each other. However, instead of meeting for breakfast at a coffee shop to discuss our adventures, we used to meet at the local Mexican restaurant for happy-hour margaritas. As my own "Charlotte" used to say, if we didn't laugh about our experiences, we probably would have gone insane.
     Despite some hairy moments, however, my "Charlotte" never gave up on her belief in true love. Like TV Charlotte, she's been married twice, and the only downside to the Charlottes of the world is that chances are you're always going to end up being a bridesmaid at their weddings. I recently attended my own darling Charlotte down the aisle, but this time, the bridesmaids wore designer dresses and Manolo Blahnik shoes--mine were blue satin and about a million miles high. So what they say about life is true: Some things do get better when you get older.

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Candace Bushnell is, of course, the famed columnist who wrote the book that spawned the television series. Shame on you if you didn't know that.