Sex something something something
Candace Bushnell is headed Off-Broadway this fall with her new solo show, and I think it should be the hottest ticket since Hadestown. Allow me to explain.
On an unseasonably warm autumn day in 2019, I went to an author talk. It was hot enough that I ordered cold brew coffee in October in New England. I know what you’re thinking: “But gay men only ever drink iced coffee! Ordering cold brew is hardly proof of the weather.” The coffee is not the point of this story, though if it were, I would need to mention I also had an apple cider donut. The point is, it was warm, and I was caffeinated and in the mood for Sex.
Sex and the City, to be precise.
In case you aren’t following, the real point of the story is that I went to a talk by Candace Bushnell, the author of Sex and the City, a newspaper column that was made into a book and then a TV show, which every white woman watched, and almost every gay man, and a handful of straight men who wanted to see Kim Cattrall’s tits. They were good, right? Worth six seasons of DVDs? Yeah, I don’t know, maybe.
Author talks are generally straightforward, bordering on bland. The author reads from their latest book, there are some questions from the audience, the author signs copies of the book, and we all go home more or less happy. Candace Bushnell’s author talk (which may have secretly been an early out-of-town tryout of her one-woman show) was decidedly not bland.
Even though more than two decades had passed since the TV show started, Candace Bushnell looked better than good that day; she looked fantastic. I didn’t sit too close, because the talk takes place at the front of the room, but the signing takes place at the back of the room, so if you want to get your book signed without waiting forever, sitting in the back is the way to go. Incidentally, the bigger fans sit up front, which means they wait longer to get their book signed at the end, which is proof that there is no justice in the world, and that you can never have your cake and eat it, too. I’m sorry that you had to find out this way.
So, from a distance, Candace Bushnell looked fantastic. Have you ever seen Barbra Streisand in person? I saw her in concert once from the balcony at a sold-out stadium, and she still looked incredible. Famous people must get plastic surgery the same way drag queens paint their makeup: for the back of the house. If you’re not the kind of person who has seen Babs live, you should probably stop reading now, because we are very different people who simply will not connect well. I’m sorry that you had to find out this way.
Candace Bushnell started her author talk (the format of which was a panel discussion) by sticking her leg straight out to show the audience her shoes. They were sparkly and ankle-high, or as she proclaimed into the microphone, “everyone needs to know it’s a Manolo boot!” (truly her words, not mine). Most people couldn’t see her boot, myself included, because of the angle at which she stuck out her leg and the placement of the tables around the chair she was sitting in, but she apparently felt the message was understood and moved on.
This seems like as good a time as any to tell you that I’ve never read a single word written by Candace Bushnell. I suppose I have read the words “Sex and the City” on my TV screen while watching HBO, so I have read exactly four words by Candace Bushnell, but other than that, nothing. I even bought one of her books back in college (not Sex and the City, weirdly enough), but it either ended up in a donation or recycling bin, unopened. So really, I have no idea why I’m at this event. I’ve dragged my friend, Jonathan, with me; he’s not sure why we’re here either, but he’s the agreeable sort of companion that doesn’t ask too many questions.
It’s worth noting that there was a moderator for this panel discussion. I mention this because the moderator’s presence would imply that someone was there solely to wrangle the conversation into some semblance of coherence, but she either misunderstood her role or failed at it miserably. I use the word ‘conversation’ in describing the function of the moderator because, as you may have guessed from the use of the word ‘panel’, there was second author present. I’m sure the intention was for this other author to share the spotlight, or at the very least, get a word in edgewise; she also failed miserably on both accounts. I would posit that she may have just been there to sell books, but her book wasn’t even out yet! I have no idea why she was there, and by the end, I don’t think she knew either.
I’ll skip the details of the panel discussion, because as is often the case with author events, the Question & Answer section was where thing really heated up. I had been at an author talk at this exact venue before where the Q&A went totally off the rails, so I was prepared for this. I think the energy in this specific room breeds some sort of very weird, misplaced confidence in audience members. Perhaps all open Q&As do.
The first question for Candace Bushnell came from a woman who was celebrating her 50th birthday that year. Her announcement of the fact that she had a birthday at some point that year (let that sink in, please) led to almost everyone else announcing not only their age but when they would be having their next birthday. Have you ever heard the statistic that when you have more than 20 people in a room, the chances are almost 100% that two of them share a birthday? The math checks out. Birthdays are not special.
Miss Not-Yet-50 rambled on for, and please know that I checked the clock, and this is not an exaggeration, seven minutes. The gist of her “question” (read: monologue) was that she was in an improv group. I wish I could say that she was trying to sell tickets to her next show or something enterprising like that, but sadly, she just seemed like she had a lot of feelings. It went on for so long that the moderator said, “Sorry, is there a question in there or did you just want to share with the group?” By ‘group’, she meant the hundreds of audience members. This was the same moderator who let Candace Bushnell steamroll some poor lady whose book wasn’t even out yet. It was that bad.
We finally get the 49-year-old virgin (just kidding, she looked like an enormous slut) to sit down (just kidding, her sexual history is none of my business), which led to another series of rambling questions, at least one of which involved the term “vaginal atrophy” (fine) and a detailed discussion of the effects of estrogen cream on the vagina and the potential penis in said vagina (less fine).
Then someone asked, “I once ran into Sarah Jessica Parker in New York City, and she was very rude to me. What do you have to say about that?”
Candace Bushnell didn’t have much to say about that, mostly because that’s not a real question that someone asked. I just said it to Jonathan as we sat in the audience, but he laughed. I did once run into SJP in NYC, but honestly, I didn’t recognize her. My friend’s uncle was the one who pointed her out, but at that point she was too far down the block to do anything about it. I have to live with that regret every day of my life.
To pay penance for missing my chance to bother her in person, Jonathan and I went to Sarah Jessica Parker’s favorite restaurant, Gradisca. She’d mentioned it once in an interview with Vogue. The name comes from the verb ‘gradire’ in Italian, which means ‘to accept something with pleasure’. It’s in the West Village. Tiny place, kind of a basement, but delicious. If you get there early enough, there is a little Italian grandma-type lady standing near the door making the pasta from scratch by hand, wearing an apron and pink house shoes. That makes it feel more authentic. Sarah Jessica Parker wasn’t there, in case you were curious. I accepted that, but not with pleasure.
The next question at the panel came from a straight man. I was shocked there were any there at all, nevertheless one brave enough to get up to the mic.
“I’m a sixty-something guy,” he began. “I keep in decent shape. I dress pretty well. But I can’t find a woman!”
Candace Bushnell could only relate to one of these four points, unfortunately. Although she’s in her sixties, she’s not in decent shape; she’s in great shape. She doesn’t dress pretty well; she’s a style icon. Lastly, Candace can find a man. She was introduced to her current boyfriend by Chris Noth, the actor who played Mr. Big on the SATC series. Candace told us that she and Chris lived in the same building in NYC for a while. That anecdote made me wonder whether the series was all that fictional. Before that day, I’m not sure I had ever thought about the fact that Candace Bushnell and Carrie Bradshaw have the same initials. She’s wearing a Manolo boot; it’s almost as if she is begging us to wonder if she herself is Carrie Bradshaw. I can’t answer that question, unfortunately; Candace wasn’t there to talk about Carrie or Samantha or Charlotte or Miranda. She said she feels like those characters are out in the universe on their own journeys now. Aren’t we all?
“Where should I go to meet women?” the man asked, audibly exasperated. “I’ve tried online dating, but that doesn’t work. No one is interested in a guy my age.”
“Are you interested in women your age?” the moderator asked him. The man paused ever so briefly, and then said that he’d be open to it. The pause, small as it was, undermined any credibility he had, and the three women on the stage gave up on him entirely. Even from a distance, I could see the light in Candace Bushnell’s eyes die as she answered him.
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“I don’t know, sir,” she said. “Work on your personality?”
This got a big laugh from the audience, but the man was not swayed and stayed at the mic.
“There seem to be a lot of women here today,” the bookless author chimed in, “so maybe you’re already in the right place!” It wasn’t clear whether she was kidding, but it didn’t move things along either way.
“Does anyone here want to fuck this man?” I asked, just loudly enough for the women around me to hear. They laughed, but no one raised a hand. It was worth a try.
“I’m serious!” the man said, persistent as ever. The panelists exchanged glances, at which point Candace seemed to decide that it was time to shut this down.
“Look, people are going to hate me for saying this, but it’s true,” Candace said. I half-wondered if she was about to come out as a Republican. Can you imagine?
“Relationships are a skill,” she went on. Ah, the other R-word. “Some people are good at being in relationships, and some people aren’t. If you think you have worked on everything else, and you’re still having trouble, maybe you need to work on being a good partner.”
The man shrugged and walked back to his seat; it wasn’t the advice he was looking for, and he didn’t look like he was going to go home, open his computer, and search “how to be a good boyfriend”. Nor was it a great punchline to the awkward interaction, and the audience was a bit deflated.
The next two questions were from teenage girls; what were they even doing there? Are teenagers still interested in Sex and the City? I was a teenager when the show was on and remember renting DVDs of the episodes at Blockbuster. That entire sentence makes me feel like a fossil, but the show is very rooted in a specific timeframe. I can’t imagine high schoolers caring about any of it at this point, and maybe they don’t! The questions from these two girls had nothing to do with the book or the show or even Candace. They were more looking for life advice than anything, and Candace wasn’t here to play therapist. In response to the one girl, she sighed directly into the microphone and pithily said, “Embrace life.” That’s it. That’s the big secret! Embrace life. If you aren’t doing it, you should. If you are, and it’s not working for you — well, maybe you’re bad at relationships. Maybe you’re a bad life partner. (Get it?)
The panel eventually ended. I checked the time and found that the panel was wrapping up early, and yet somehow felt that it went on far too long. Jonathan and I rushed to the back to get in line for the book signing, and we were near the front. I picked up the book that Candace Bushnell was there to promote: Is there still Sex in the City?
The change of conjunction to preposition, ‘and’ to ‘in’, wasn’t lost on me. My mind wandered to the unlikely eventuality of the author continuing to modify parts of the title, no longer content with just subbing in a preposition, but also swapping out the article. Perhaps later she would even change the location as her attempts to sell books continued. Ten years from now, would we be able to buy a copy of “Is there too much Sex around our Suburbs?”? Twenty years from now, “Having Sex through my Retirement Community”?
The book was $26. The cover featured a photo of some unknown model that looked surprisingly like Candace, only younger. I’d be lying if I said I bought a copy, met the author, had her sign it, and talked to her about the panel; I found that in that moment, I just wanted to leave, and so we did. Jonathan was just along for the ride, anyway.
If I had stayed, I imagine my interaction with Candance Bushnell would have gone something like this:
Me: Thank you so much for coming to Boston!
CB: Sure thing. <opens book and starts to sign>
Me: Those were some crazy questions in there, huh? I thought you handled it all well.
CB: You think? I’ve seen worse. <closes book and slides it across the table>
Me: Oh yeah? Like what?
CB: Someone once asked me if I had invented the c-word. At a Mother’s Day event.
Me: Oh. <walks away and opens book; it reads, “Embrace Life. Candace Bushnell”>
There is one part of the panel discussion that I need to recount: Candance Bushnell told us that she recently had been rejected for a mortgage. She said it was because middle-aged women are invisible. She’d had enough money in the bank to buy the property outright, and yet the bank still wouldn’t give her a mortgage, even though she’d never had trouble getting a mortgage when she was married. Candace Bushnell is divorced but was married for a decade to a ballet dancer, which meant they’d had a consistent source of income to declare, whereas Candace is essentially self-employed (albeit gainfully). So really, not getting a mortgage was probably more about her lack of steady income, and less about her gender or age, but I’m not a banker, or a woman, or middle-aged, so what do I know?
What I do know is that she didn’t need my $26.
Emerging into the sun, blinking, we pondered our next move.
“Should we get cosmos?” I asked.
“I can’t tell if you’re kidding,” Jonathan said.
“Depends on your answer.”
“Is it too warm for red wine?”
Is it ever? We headed off, in search of wine and cheese, and new strangers with fewer questions.
Even though we didn’t end up getting cosmos, maybe this fall we’ll go see her show. If it’s a warm day, I hope she’ll bust out the Manolo boot for old time’s sake. Previews for the limited 12-week engagement of Is There Still Sex in the City? begin at the Daryl Roth Theatre on November 13 ahead of a December 7 opening. Tickets cost twice what her book did, though. I’m sorry that you had to find out this way.
