Sex Beyond the City

By Jill Brooke

Thanks to writer Candace Bushnell, we all can instantly identify a “Sex and the City” moment. It could be the thrill of wearing a new pair of pink lizard Manolos. It might be when we escape from the kids and hubby for a much-needed Cosmo with our close girlfriends. For me, it was sharing a cab with the budding author in the early ‘90s when she was writing for Mademoiselle.

Like many young women of the time, Candace bunked in New York City with three pals and lived scrappily yet stylishly. Her beauty opened doors to art openings, clubs, and glamorous promotional events, which conveniently offered free hors d’oeuvres—a.k.a, dinner. We were kindred spirits, veterans of both the writing trade and party circuit. So, when we were introduced at an event downtown, there was an immediate connection. The two of us, accompanied by a few other girls, squeezed into a cab to rush to another party. Even then, Candace was not only refreshingly candid but also enormously inquisitive, with a wit as sharp as her 4-inch stilettos.

“Who are you dating?” she wanted to know.

I rarely divulged such personal information and was in no mood to unburden my intimate secrets to this woman I’d barely met, but Candace had a way of getting people to confide in her.

“No one seriously right now,” I found myself saying, “but I’ve just gone on a few dates with this guy, John.” She pressed me for his last name and I reluctantly revealed it.

“John _____!” she squealed excitedly, recognizing the name at once and turning to another friend. “We call him Thumbelina, right, Anne?”

Both women started giggling.

“Why Thumbelina?” I asked, totally perplexed.

Cackling with laughter, Candace explained that the nickname referred to the diminutive size of a certain portion of his anatomy. It was, like the Hans Christian Andersen creature, “No bigger than the size of your thumb.”

Poor John! The relationship never went anywhere and I never discovered if her characterization was true. But I never forgot that exchange.

Until that time, I had never, ever discussed sex with a friend nor compared field notes. But Candace approached frank sexual conversation like a modern-day archeologist, digging for facts and divulging discoveries. I wasn’t surprised when, a year later in 1994, her observations on the subject would become fodder for her “Sex and the City” column in the New York Observer. In those days, Candace reminded me of the future Samantha Jones character. She was someone who unapologetically cared about her own pleasure and enjoyed conquests not only in her career, but also in her love life.

Although Candace’s personal life was more like Carrie’s than Samantha’s (“I really didn’t date that many men,” she once confided), she really is our modern-day Jane Austen, honestly depicting the struggles of women who want to maintain their own sense of self instead of defining themselves solely as mothers and wives.

Flash forward 16 years.

Carrie Bradshaw’s real-life alter ego, Candace Bushnell, is at the Barnes & Noble bookstore near her downtown Manhattan apartment to promote her latest book, The Carrie Diaries (Harper Collins, 2010). She walks into the room like a rock star, passing hundreds of applauding fans perched on metal folding chairs. They “ooh” and “ah” over her Carrie-like outfit, which includes skintight pants and a flowing Roberto Cavalli navy and yellow-print shirt.

What many of these diehard SATC fans might not realize is that the quintessential “city” girl, Carrie, and her creator, Bushnell, are deeply rooted in a far more rural setting. And after writing blockbusters including “Lipstick Jungle,” “Trading Up,” “Four Blondes,” and “One Fifth Avenue,” Bushnell is revisiting her original success with SATC by transporting fans to her famous character’s earlier life. It’s a strategy that has mined gold for the producers of Batman, Star Wars, and Superman so why not Candace?

“It’s Carrie in high school and how she became Carrie,” chirps Bushnell cheerfully to one audience member’s question about her latest inspiration. The quintessential elements that endeared Carrie Bradshaw, immortalized by Sarah Jessica Parker, to her legions of fans, are all inside this page-turner. There’s the questioning, the close friendships, the desire to be a writer, even Carrie’s signature flair for fashion—except now she’s a 17 year-old Connecticut high school student, just like Bushnell was way back when. As The New York Times observed, it’s less ‘Sex and the City,’ more ‘Making Out and the Suburbs.’ ” Instead of Mr. Big as her paramour, the young Carrie adores a cute boy named Sebastian who turns out to be a Mr. Bad. As Bushnell bemoans, “Everyone has one of those in their life, especially in high school, and everyone has a friend who betrays them.”

Readers of Bushnell’s famous 1994 New York Observer column and subsequent book will remember that little was written about Carrie’s familial life. Nor was it addressed much in the TV series or movies. When asked why she supplied so little detail about Carrie’s upbringing, Bushnell explains, “For those of us who were single in New York, it was our friends who became family and often you never met someone’s family except for rare occasions.”

“I just love your books,” gushes an audience member during the question-and-answer portion of Bushnell’s appearance. “In fact, I have my daughter here with me and she loves them too.” Bushnell smiles at the woman, who is waving a new copy of the book in her hand.

“This book is for everyone,” says the author, summoning her best saleswoman pitch. “I know many moms and daughters enjoyed these characters and will like this book. I’m now 50 and still remember high school. For the moms, it will bring them back to their high school years. For young adults, it’s a great story of a 17-year-old girl and all the trials and tribulations that come with that.”

Bushnell then takes another question. A stern-looking woman rises up from her seat. “Do you really think you have advanced the feminist cause?” she asks, her voice dripping with scorn. “These characters care about glamour, fashion, and finding the guy.”

Bushnell is caught off guard. Quickly recovering, she self-deprecatingly kicks out her leg from behind the podium, exposing her blue, high-heeled clogs and says, “I just thought I was going to be asked questions about where I bought my shoes!” (They’re by Chanel and she bought them at Saks Fifth Avenue, if you’re curious). The audience giggles and then Bushnell focuses her steely blue eyes on the woman.

“I write about characters authentically,” she says. I was coming of age in the ‘70s and ‘80s when there was no one in their 30s like Carrie Bradshaw. The question was, ‘Why are there so many great single women and no great men to marry them?’ Single women in their 30s were considered desperate. But I saw us as less traditional and more adventurous. We really supported each other and made our own little families out of our friends and laughed about all of the crazy men.” Bushnell pauses as many audience members nod in recognition. “My characters went to college not to get a MRS degree but to have a career and there’s a shopping element in their lives but, often, they are paying for it,” she adds. “It’s also what the audience wants to see. For some women, it really is the shoes and the love of fashion and it’s okay! For me, there’s an everyday feminism.” Perhaps not too surprisingly, Bushnell doesn’t equate superficial concerns with shallowness. “If you want to look good when you go out, isn’t part of that respect?” she asks, rhetorically.

Another woman raises her hand to ask a follow-up: “But Ms. Bushnell, if the characters are feminists, why do they need relationships to be happy?” Bushnell takes a deep breath while digesting the question. Surveying the audience, she asks, “Who doesn’t want a loving partner in their life? It’s kind of a basic human trait.” Again, the audience, most of whom are impeccably dressed and wearing enough Manolos to stock the shoe floor at Neiman Marcus, smile approvingly. “But the question of need is interesting,” says Bushnell reflectively. “We don’t need relationships, but we like them and want them. I certainly didn’t settle when I got married. I was 43. What do you define as need vs. want? That’s the push-pull.”

After the Q&A, Bushnell signs books for almost an hour. A friend greets her on the line. She confesses that she can’t wait to get back to Connecticut just to “chill.” “The book tour has kept her very busy,” admits her husband, Charles Askegard, who is standing by protectively. It is no coincidence that Carrie’s fictional home is in Connecticut. Not only does Candace Bushnell have a weekend house here, but she actually grew up in Glastonbury. Or, as Bushnell says with her voice trailing off for effect, “Glastonboring.” As Bushnell remembers it, the girls of Glastonbury all wore the same preppy uniforms and spoke with a locked-jaw tightness. It was sports, sports, sports—which is why Carrie is portrayed on a swim team (Bushnell played tennis). Still, as Bushnell acknowledged in an interview with the New York Post, “I think for young women, it’s important to be involved in sports. You learn that there are days when you win, days you lose, days when you’re competing on a team with your friends and days when you have to compete against them. It gives a girl some perspective on giving things her all.”

The similarities between author and heroine don’t end with their hometown. Like young Carrie, Bushnell has two sisters and a father named Calvin, who is a rocket scientist. However, for dramatic purposes, Bushnell has Carrie’s mother succumbing to breast cancer. “I’d always felt the character had some kind of loss when she was young and overcoming that loss gave her a slightly different perspective on the world,” says Bushnell. In real life, the author’s mother, Camille, a travel-agent-turned-real-estate-agent, survived her high school years and recently died of the same disease in 2006.

Although she never married the inspiration for Mr. Big—that would be the model-chasing, power-lunching publisher, Ron Galotti, who left her to marry someone else—Candace did rebound and eventually found someone who also possessed the “big” title—he has a big heart, just like her dad.

“I wasn’t in a rush to get married,” she says, smiling. Until, of course, she met “The One.” That would be Askegard, the dashing dancer from the New York City Ballet who, at age 33, was 10 years younger than Bushnell when they met.

In typical Candace fashion, there was drama attached to the quick, eight-week courtship. Anne Sherman, a business executive and Candace’s best friend (Bushnell dedicated a book to Sherman, who let the budding author stay at her posh pad during the leaner years), remembers Candace calling her and saying, “Sweetie, I’m getting married. We’re going to do it in Nantucket. Can you help?”

Sherman immediately agreed, whereupon Bushnell added, “Did I mention it was July 4th weekend?” True to her word, Sherman marshaled friends and associates, including Bushnell’s agent, to help prepare for the big event. It was Bushnell’s agent who volunteered to buy the flowers.

The wedding was held at a beach house, hurriedly rented for the occasion. The bride and groom descended a flight of stairs onto the beach where a trellis, gracefully draped in luscious white flowers, awaited. Candace was wearing a flowing Ralph Lauren dress with pink roses in her hair, while Charles was in a white Prada suit. Sherman remembers thinking, “Gosh, Candace’s agent was really generous! This trellis is beautiful and the flowers must have cost a lot!” As Charles and Candace were exchanging vows, Sherman noticed out of the corner of her eye, an irate bride rushing down the beach. It soon became clear that it was her trellis now framing the happy couple while photographers snapped away. “Only with Candace does this happen,” says Sherman. “My heart was racing! I was praying that they would say their vows in time.” Luckily, they did, and the party moved further down the beach, eventually repairing to The Wauwinet for dinner. In their write-up of the event for the Vows” section, The New York Times displays a gorgeous photo of Charles tossing his bride in the air. Behind her, there’s that beautiful trellis. Smiling at the memory, Sherman says, “When you’re with Candace, life is never dull.”

Of course, there are times when “dull” is precisely what Candace craves. When she wants to slow down and relax, she retreats to Connecticut. Here, in Roxbury, Candace welcomes quiet. “I like being low-key here and it’s a good balance from my New York City life,” says Bushnell, relaxing on the red velvet couch in her Victorian farmhouse. “When I’m here, I rarely put on my contact lenses. I don’t feel like I have to wear make-up.”

Her decorator, Susan Forristal Smith of Susan Forristal Smith Interiors, says Candace may substitute jeans for designer dresses, but still has style oozing from every pore. She notes that, “Even in the country, Candace likes to be sexy.” The décor definitely reveals a taste for all things sybaritic. “Because Candace loves animal prints and anything leopard, we added leopard pillows and curtains to the main room, which has yellow toile wallpaper and it looks great.” In the pool house, Candace has a daybed upholstered with a soft and cozy Mongolian lamb bedcover. “I intend to be sexy at every age,” she shrugs.

Still, Candace has mellowed with the passing years and especially when in Connecticut, she enjoys some of life’s simpler pleasures. “We rarely go out; it’s more home dinners—staying around the hearth,” she says of her Roxbury lifestyle. She also spends a lot of time writing and she’s been as busy as ever. She was the executive producer of NBC’s “Lipstick Jungle,” which starred Brooke Shields and ran for 20 episodes. She also hosted a Sirius radio show, “Sex, Success and Sensibility” and, recently, she was hired to create comedy webisodes for Meredith Corporation. On top of that, she is still under contract to write a sequel or prequel to “The Carrie Diaries.”

When Bushnell does venture out, there are constant reminders of her cultural influence. Both in Manhattan and far beyond, groups of stiletto-wearing, 30-, 40- and 50-somethings perch on stylish banquettes, sipping variations on Cosmos and chatting frankly about which one of them is a “Samantha” or a “Charlotte.”

Truth be told, in 2010, Bushnell’s legacy is not just “in the city” but also “in the suburbs” and far beyond. I visited 84 Park in Stamford, CT, and was struck by how a place with its martini menu of countless concoctions, ladylike nibbles, and white couches lit by lavender fixtures probably would look very different if it weren’t for the prevalence of SATC and “girls’ night out.” Beyond shoes and pink drinks, the true legacy of Samantha, Carrie, Miranda, and Charlotte might just be a newfound appreciation for female friendships and the importance of celebrating them.

When asked what she is most proud of, Bushnell pauses. “I have six New York Times bestselling novels about female characters who are realistic. I don’t pull any punches. Some of my characters are not superficially likeable, like Janie Wilcox or Mindy Gooch. They’re real women. But you enjoy meeting them.”

In fact, women around the world identify with all her characters, which is why the books have been translated into 32 languages and why she is mobbed wherever she goes.

“I love my work,” says Bushnell. “I think women can feel they have control over their lives and it’s healthy to accept who you are at whatever age and embrace it.”

Does she have any regrets? “I do worry that young girls are getting the message a guy is going to solve their problems,” she says, her eyebrows arching into teepees as she rolls her eyes in exasperation. “I still really am a big believer that you try to make it on your own,” she declares. “Life is long and at the end of day, you have to be able to count on yourself.”