Sex & the City

Well, playing ping pong was a full six minutes of entertainment. I played, I lost, quickly, and then I retreated to a table in the corner at Soho House with three of my best girlfriends and my sister. Thankful that we were in an environment where we could actually hear each other speak - and loud enough that most of the bar was our audience -we caught up on what was going on in our lives. It was about an hour in when one of the girls exclaimed, “We’re soooo Sex & the City.” As we broke down who was which character we realized that although we could appear to be trying to fit ourselves into a mold, no, we ARE those characters. We could have been the characters the show was based on.

The comment was made by J, so I’ll start with her. A salacious divorce behind her (she found out her husband was cheating on her with her boss when she read it in Page Six.) It’s true, really, J said, “I’m so Samantha Jones!” J owns her own PR company, as did Samantha, and although she has had a boyfriend for the last six months or so (although she still refuses to use the term), she is a fiercely independent woman who when not in a ‘relationship‚’ is definitely content with casual dating with detachment. Did I mention she calls her ‘boyfriend’ Aiden?

Then there’s our other Samantha, C. C is in her mid-30s, also owns her own company, can talk to and woo almost any guy, but only likes them as far as they fill her immediate needs. She is focused on her new company and shuns commitment. Well, until very recently. C had what she planned as a one-night fling with a hot Argentine polo player she met casually on a Sunday night in the Hamptons. She was a bit taken aback when he called the next weekend, and the next, and the next. Now, the summer is over and he was debating going back to Argentina for two months until he had to go to Palm Springs for polo in December. Off-the-cuff C said, “Well, you could stay with me.” She’s freaking out a little bit, but decided last night, “Well, I’m just renting a boyfriend. It’s two months.” Ten minutes later she went on to downgrade hot polo player to, “A temporary roommate with benefits” and even said she’s fine if he goes out and about and does his thing in NYC, she will too, and if they end up at home in bed together, so be it. Um, Smith Jarrod?

During all the intimate talk of casual sex our friend A’s thoughts were written all over her face. She’s non-judgmental, but she’s a bit more, well, a lot more sexually conservative than the rest of us. She loves to flirt and wants to date someone, but she’s the Ivy League educated girl you marry -definitely not a one-night-stand kinda girl. She’s Charlotte. She started to protest, then realized she didn’t have a case, and relented.

We always said we were missing a Miranda, but then J piped up, “Your sister is so Miranda.” My sister recently moved to NYC and is indeed Miranda. She’s smart, she’s practical, she’s career driven - and where Miranda was a partner in a law firm- she wants to be a CEO.

All the while I’m thinking how I’m going to go home, get on my laptop and blog this. Since the first seasons of Sex & the City my parents told me they couldn’t watch it because “It’s depressing Jen.” When I asked how so they said, “Because we see so much of you in it and we don’t want you to be 40 and still single.” At the time I was a 23-year-old columnist at the Arizona Republic- where they called me Carrie. Now I’m a 31-year-old that goes out and writes about it for a living, rents a townhouse in NYC (not far from SPJ’s), drinks martinis regularly, owns about 100 pairs of shoes, an eclectic wardrobe to suit my mood of the day, despite trial and error I haven’t found ‘the one,’ and am not desperately looking enough to settle, my dating/sexual tendencies lie clearly in the middle of Samantha and Charlotte and ironically enough, I even have my Mr. Big.

He‚s 43 (although when I met him five years ago I would have swore he was 27), he’s successful, and it was love at first sight -for me. I know he cares about me a lot, he’s there for every milestone in my life- but he has had a girlfriend since a few weeks before he met me (that he didn’t tell me about until a few weeks after we were dating). Years later told me, “You were that fantasy girl that I didn’t think could ever be real.” Well, it’s been five years and I’m currently in a period of “I’m over it.” I saw him two months ago. I called on a whim because I was in his neighborhood (alllll the way uptown) and he met me a few minutes later. We will never be. We both know it, but the saga always continues. For me, because I haven't  thought I was in love since, he’s the person that I think about by default when I’m not crushing on anyone else. For him, I know he likes me a lot, acknowledges we have chemistry, and I think wonders what if. I also think he gets off on knowing a fun, cute, younger girl’s is/was in love with him. Male ego.

Ironically, I got home last night and got an email from my friend who said, “I just came from the Sex in the City launch party at Butter.” She said she hung out with Sarah Jessica Parker, Kim Cattrall and Kristen Davis as they sipped Skyy Vodka Manolo Martinis (these will probably appear in the show, possibly replacing the Cosmo they brought back to popularity). Filming on the movie starts in NYC today.