The Movie Cometh

In honor of this Doomsday SATC Weekend, I thought I'd repost my reply to Time Out New York's accusation that I helped ruin New York. For the record, I'm not seeing SATC tonight. I'm watching the Scripps National Spelling Bee and drinking bourbon. Take that, Carrie Bradshaw.

I had really hoped to avoid blogging about SATC, but it seems that Time Out New York wanted me to do it anyway, since TONY singled me (and my homegirl Julia Allison) out as the dirty blogging spawn of Carrie Bradshaw, happily tip-tap-typing away the minutiae of our lives while we sit in our gorgeous boho-chic apartments, which we have charged to the same credit card as our Jimmy Choos.

While I'm actually flattered that TONY printed me up (I do, in fact, enjoy the sound of typing--albeit my own or someone else's), I'm doing a disservice to SATC fans everywhere if I pretend that I belong in that cult-class of cutting-edge women who love shoes as dearly as life, swish into the hottest clubs and sleep with the most attractive, interesting, and sometimes horrifying, men in the city.

The truth is that I wish I could be more like that, but I'm the most un-Carrie girl you'll meet. I just finished a half a Chipotle burrito, I'm wearing $15 shoes, and it's true, I didn't even wash my hair this morning. Even worse, I live in Chicago.

I do love my girl friends, but I don't travel in a pack, and there aren't any cougars I can list as mis amigas (although if I could roll with Samantha, I probably would). It was while I lived in New York (which I did, for six months--and not in the West Village or UES, but in Harlem where my neighbors thought I was a narc and then in Windsor Terrace, Brooklyn where I hung tight with my Irish Catholic neighbors and my nicotine-lunged landlady from Staten Island) that I got even slightly close to being "one of the girls." Three fellow interns and I went out together, wound up in crazy situations and met interesting people, but I didn't blog about it much nor was there any sex in the city because I had a boyfriend back in Chicago. Which brings me to another thing...

I am in the most dull (to everyone else) and wonderful (for me) longterm relationship--a real life version of When Harry Met Sally. And the thing about Harry and Sally is that after that romantic moment on New Year's Eve where Billy Crystal comes running to kiss Meg Ryan and tell her just how much he loves her, everything is pretty boring. Happily ever after. And that's why none of you hear about that.

So why do we girls blog? Why listen to yourself type and hope that someone else might listen too?

Maybe for the same reason women gathered around quilting circles or my grandmother plays bridge with her girl friends--there's something invigorating about this gathering and storytelling as we create identities and form relationships out of something as simple as a keyboard. It may not be sex, but it's still empowering.

And like Candace Bushnell told me when I was a freshman at Northwestern lo those many years ago, I think now I'm gonna "go out, have a couple cosmopolitans and cause some trouble."

Maybe you'll hear about it later.