New York City Grrls...

—Excerpt from Native New Yorker, by Odyssey—
And love, love is just a passing word—
It's the thought you had in a taxi cab
that got left at the curb
when he dropped you off on East Eighty-third.
Oh, oh, oh, you're a native New Yorker.
You should know the score by now,
you're a native New Yorker...

Long before Carrie & company hit the HBO airwaves in '98 there was another set of girls just like them—what I refer to as the real SATC girls—*real* because, 10-15 years earlier, we actually lived the lives our TV-counterparts-to-be only played. There were Caitlin & Donna (lusty Samanthas); Charmaine (cynical Miranda); Pam (sweet-as-sugar, ever-optimistic Charlotte); & me (designer-clothes-whore, unlucky-in-love Carrie).

I met Caitlin—who lived in Chelsea on West 26th Street (before Chelsea was chic)—when I got my first real job. She was the receptionist at the ad agency where I worked, & we bonded after she expressed her infatuation with my boyfriend's voice (a soft, lilting Irish brogue). We started hanging out at Irish pubs, often emerging as the morning sun was rising over the East River. But we were very young—early 20s—& could handle such self-imposed physical abuse with little or no after-effects. A stunner with the (singing) voice of an angel, Caitlin had the misfortune of being—how do I put this nicely?—heavy. Very heavy, but just in her lower body. When seated at a table she looked tall & lissome, & men fell all over her. Until she stood up, revealing abnormally large hips & thighs. My boyfriend's hot brother hit on her one night & she fell for him like a rock from the top of the Trade Center. He did take her home & screwed her, but would have nothing to do with her thereafter, breaking her heart. Her attitude kind of turned around after she got over his rejection, & she adopted an (unheard of at the time) male attitude—fuck 'em & leave 'em. One such incident occured in my apartment—she came back with some guy she'd picked up & proceeded to go at it on my dining room floor. Right in front of me! Saw the *entry* & the whole 9-yards before deciding I would probably be better off in my bedroom. Alone. Her sexual behavior & quest for love was a continuing melodrama until she finally met David—a nice Jewish boy who loved her for herself, fat or no. As their relationship progressed towards marriage, ours fell apart & I didn't see her for a few years until I ran into her quite by chance on the street & we renewed it. David & she divorced a year or so later, & she went back to her old ways. Until she met another nice Jewish boy & decided to get married again. The kicker here is that her new guy was an orthodox Jew, & my good Irish Catholic friend converted for him. True to her new religion, she wore long-sleeved blouses, stockings year-round, & a wig to cover her head—rushed to get home by sundown on Fridays to celebrate Sabbath & would have no contact with the outside world until sundown Saturday. I helped her pick out an appropriate wedding gown at Bergdorf's, they were married, & although we spoke a few times after, we no longer had anything in common. The last I ever heard of her is that they moved to a kibbutz in Israel...in 1987!

Donna, from Jackson Heights, Queens, & I met on one of those party-hearty *Cruises to Nowhere* in '84, which I was on with my (just out-of-the-closet) friend Earl. Having been totally freaked out by & furious about his deception—as well as the manner in which he chose to tell me he liked boys (subjecting me to a male stripper bar & gay dance club—all in one night!)—he'd taken me along as penance. Not knowing he was gay (or simply not to be deterred), Donna latched on to him, & the group of us thus bonded as instant best friends. She traveled to Washington, DC to see him on several occasions (for company-party type things—I suppose so he didn't have to out himself to his colleagues) & even managed to get him into a bed a few times. Donna & I would meet after work several nights a week to troll various clubs—the Park 10 in particular, where I fell in lust with its gorgeous Argentine bartender (who held me off just like Big did Carrie) while she scored the latest & greatest hunk to enter its portals. We did Acapulco together, too, & it was there I discovered she had breast implants, obvious by the half-moon shape that appeared above the edge of her very tight tank tops. While I spent my vacation falling in lust with a half-Mexican, half-Spanish god (6'3 & bronzed with regal, chisled features), Donna *did* guys she met at Baby-O—*innest* of all the in discos. She said she hated me for deserting her, but I think she was secretly pleased at my disappearance because it left her with our hotel room all to herself. When I last saw her—in '96—she was still going out to clubs & partying every night. Whatever turns you on...

Pam & I became friends the winter of '85 by virtue of being thrown together as roommates in our ski house. She was a lawyer—a sweet, kind of lost soul from Queens who then lived in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn (before it became chic) & wanted nothing more than to get married & have kids. Like the rest of us, she partied alot & made more than a few egregious mate-mistakes before finding Brian, who she wed in '90, & with whom she had two kids—the first of whom she named Caitlin. She has resided happily-ever-after in suburban New Jersey, as far as I know (though, personally, I think she settled for the best of what was available rather than marrying for love). To my regret, we lost touch ten, twelve years ago—something that can easily happen when one girlfriend has a baby & becomes esconced in suburban family life while the other remains in the City, footloose & fancy free.

Back-tracking a bit, we decided to do a summer share in East Hampton the summer of '86, Pam & me, simply because we were foolish enough to think we might actually find the man of our dreams on one of its expansive beaches or in one of its tony clubs. Wrong. What we did meet were the same boors we rejected in tony Manhattan clubs. Both of us lamented that we might as well have stood on the roofs of our respective apartment buildings & thrown 3,000 one-dollar bills to the wind. The only positive outcome of this rather expensive daliance was that we met Charmaine, a fellow shareholder who eventually became—& remains—my best friend. Thus, the three of us kept each other amused for the remainder of that very long summer—the highlight of which was my being invited by Joel Steinberg (who would, a scant two months later, murder his adopted daughter & be sentenced to 25 years in the slammer) to spend an afternoon on his yacht. Fortunately for me I couldn't find a way to get to Patchogue & had to decline. For many months after, however, Pam & Charmaine chuckled (somewhat too gleefully for my taste) that I—rather than his daughter—could have been the one who ended up *mort* because I probably would have pissed him off so much he would have offed me & thrown my body overboard...

But I digress. On to Charmaine. A workaholic lawyer who lived but 4 blocks south of me, her taste in men was/is questionable at best—generally sleazy types with dubious backgrounds & lifestyles—something she attributes to a continuing attempt to rebel against her prep schooled rich girl/heiress upbringing. Making bad choices meant she could never take them home &, thus, would be spared having to make a commitment, be a wife, or have kids—thoughts that left her paralyzed with fear. Some of her more interesting choices included Benny, a coke dealer posing as a limo driver, who danced on bars & disappeared quick as New York minute, only to reappear hours later looking even more disheveled than he did when he left; Vinny—a 30-something control freak who still lived with his good Italian mama; Peter—pretty-boy son of a partner at a firm she worked for & a closet gay who ignored & tormented her, thus making her even more determined to win him over; & Bill—a 40-something former playboy type who had no visible means of making a living, colored his balding pate with shoe polish & a comb-over, & dyed his eyebrows. Very freaky looking. Then, a few years ago, she reunited with Fred, her *TDF* college love. In town for a business meeting, he phoned & invited her to dinner. Long story short, once-gorgeous Fred now sported a hideous Afro (long after they were chic), wore polyester, & was seriously overweight as well as very married. But she fucked him in his motel room anyway—a mercy-fuck, she said. Yuck. Never in a million years!

Then there's me. My love life reads like a (bad) novel, but I will make it mercifully short. Like Carrie, I've always fallen for the emotionally unavailable type. Even as recently as last year. My list includes (but is not limited to): Chris—a slick, calculating, cold-as-ice car designer who charmed me off my feet & wasted two years of my life before I realized he would never love me—then somehow managing to walk away, never even glancing back over my shoulder; David—a handsome, dashing, successful & very—albeit unhappily—married son of Mafia royalty who romanced me for a year & a half before impregnating me & threatening to have me offed if I didn't abort; Lawrence—a priggish, emotionless economist who was also a sexual superman & drove me to treacherous heights of jealousy with tales of his exploits, which he always explained in painful, lurid detail; Alex—a late 20-something Robert Redford-type—handsome, sexy, brilliant lawyer & as endearingly charming as a little kid, who I (literally) sailed off into the sunset with until I got pregnant & he told me the only thing wrong with our relationship was my pregnancy, then dumped me for an Asian model a month after my abortion; Tommy—a futures trader I met in a bar (thanks alot, Charmaine!) who was not only a dead-ringer for actor/playwright Sam Shepard but also another Mafia prince (who left me standing on the street in tears after I fell in love & tried to become a more important part of a life that, unbeknownst to me, he would never be allowed to let me into); & last, but certainly not least, Jimmy—6'5, DDG, sizzling hot—& hopefully the last of the *bad boys* in my life. The father of my assistant, I met him at her wedding last June. We had an impromptu tryst in the back of his SUV & he told me he hoped to be seeing more of me, now. We were both a little trashed & I left without exchanging phone numbers. But I wasn't worried because hey!—he was Leanna's father & also local. Or so I thought. At least until Leanna returned from her honeymoon & told me he lived on Wake Island—half-way around the world. Now completely panicked, I dashed off an email that she forwarded to him. While we wrote steamy email back & forth—full of stuff like how he couldn't wait to see me again—he returned six months later & showed up at our office with an extremely wealthy 5'10 Latina in tow. Leanna said they were living together. Kinda reminds me of the old Pet Shop Boys lyrics: "I love you, you pay my rent..." Talk about getting sand-bagged...

Well, that's my love life—something that, sadly, has not had Carrie's same happy ending. I'm not sure any of our stories (save, perhaps, for Pam & Caitlin) had or even will have happy endings. Life doesn't come with guarantees. But I hope you've enjoyed reading about the exploits of the real-life versions of Carrie, Miranda, Charlotte & Samantha—our own group of incredible girls who rocked Gotham throughout the 80s...

(Note to readers: Since this particular post is destined to take on a life of its own, please check my sidebar for the link to it—New York City Grrl—to follow our further adventures)