From a bestselling novelist, this "cultural phenomenon" is a fascinating foray into the hearts, minds, and mating habits of modern-day New Yorkers and the inspiration behind the television series (Oprah).

Enter a world where the shocking and hilarious dating rituals of the privileged are exposed by a true insider. In essays drawn from her witty and sometimes brutally candid column in the New York Observer, Candace Bushnell introduces us to the young and beautiful who travel in packs from parties to bars to clubs–and forever changes the conversation about women, friendships, love, and sex. 

Wildly funny, unexpectedly poignant, wickedly observant, Sex and the City blazes a glorious, drunken cocktail trail through Manhattan. 

"Fascinating... hilarious... welcome to the cruel planet that is Manhattan." – Los Angeles Times
 
"Compulsively readable." – Marie Claire 

"Jane Austen with a martini."– Sunday Telegraph  

Sex and the City

By Candace Bushnell

Warner Books

Copyright © 2006 Candace Bushnell
All right reserved.
ISBN: 9780446617680

Chapter One

My Unsentimental Education:
Love in Manhattan?
I Don't Think So ...

Here's a Valentine's Day tale. Prepare yourself.

    An English journalist came to New York. She was attractiveand witty, and right away she hooked up with one ofNew York's typically eligible bachelors. Tim was forty-two,an investment banker who made about $5 million a year. Fortwo weeks, they kissed, held hands?and then on a warmfall day he drove her to the house he was building in theHamptons. They looked at the plans with the architect. "Iwanted to tell the architect to fill in the railings on the secondfloor, so the children wouldn't fall through," said thejournalist. "I expected Tim was going to ask me to marryhim." On Sunday night, Tim dropped her off at her apartmentand reminded her that they had dinner plans for Tuesday.On Tuesday, he called and said he'd have to take a raincheck. When she hadn't heard from him after two weeks,she called and told him, "That's an awfully long rain check."He said he would call her later in the week.

    He never did call, of course. But what interested me wasthat she couldn't understand what had happened. In England,she explained, meeting the architect would have meant something.Then I realized, Of course: She's from London. Noone's told her about the End of Love in Manhattan. Then Ithought: She'll learn.

    Welcome to the Age of Un-Innocence. The glittering lightsof Manhattan that served as backdrops for Edith Wharton'sbodice-heaving trysts are still glowing?but the stage is empty.No one has breakfast at Tiffany's, and no one has affairs toremember?instead, we have breakfast at seven A.M. and affairswe try to forget as quickly as possible. How did we getinto this mess?

    Truman Capote understood our nineties dilemma?thedilemma of Love vs. the Deal?all too well. In Breakfastat Tiffany's, Holly Golightly and Paul Varjak were faced withrestrictions?he was a kept man, she was a kept woman?butin the end they surmounted them and chose love overmoney. That doesn't happen much in Manhattan these days.We are all kept men and women?by our jobs, by our apartments,and then some of us by the pecking order atMortimers and the Royalton, by Hamptons beachfront, byfront-row Garden tickets?and we like it that way. Self-protectionand closing the deal are paramount. Cupid hasflown the co-op.

    When was the last time you heard someone say, "I loveyou!" without tagging on the inevitable (if unspoken) "as afriend." When was the last time you saw two people gazinginto each other's eyes without thinking, Yeah, right? Whenwas the last time you heard someone announce, "I am truly,madly in love," without thinking, Just wait until Mondaymorning? And what turned out to be the hot non-Tim AllenChristmas movie? Disclosure?for which ten or fifteen millionmoviegoers went to see unwanted, unaffectionate sex betweencorporate erotomaniacs?hardly the stuff we like to thinkabout when we think about love but very much the stuff ofthe modern Manhattan relationship.

    There's still plenty of sex in Manhattan but the kind of sexthat results in friendship and business deals, not romance.These days, everyone has friends and colleagues; no one reallyhas lovers?even if they have slept together.

    Back to the English journalist: After six months, some more"relationships," and a brief affair with a man who used tocall her from out of town to tell her that he'd be calling herwhen he got back into town (and never did), she got smart."Relationships in New York are about detachment," she said."But how do you get attached when you decide you want to?"

    Honey, you leave town.

LOVE AT THE BOWERY BAR, PART I

It's Friday night at the Bowery Bar. It's snowing outside andbuzzing inside. There's the actress from Los Angeles, lookingdelightfully out of place in her vinyl gray jacket and miniskirt,with her gold-medallioned, too-tanned escort. There'sthe actor, singer, and party boy Donovan Leitch in a greendown jacket and a fuzzy beige hat with earflaps. There'sFrancis Ford Coppola at a table with his wife. There's an emptychair at Francis Ford Coppola's table. It's not just empty: It'salluringly, temptingly, tauntingly, provocatively empty. It'sso empty that it's more full than any other chair in the place.And then, just when the chair's emptiness threatens to causea scene, Donovan Leitch sits down for a chat. Everyone inthe room is immediately jealous. Pissed off. The energy ofthe room lurches violently. This is romance in New York.

THE HAPPILY MARRIED MAN

"Love means having to align yourself with another person,and what if that person turns out to be a liability?" said afriend, one of the few people I know who's been happilymarried for twelve years. "And the more you're able to lookback, the more you're proven right in hindsight. Then youget further and further away from having a relationship, unlesssomething big comes along to shake you out of it?likeyour parents dying.

    "New Yorkers build up a total facade that you can't penetrate,"he continued. "I feel so lucky that things worked outfor me early on, because it's so easy not to have a relationshiphere?it almost becomes impossible to go back."

THE HAPPILY (SORT OF) MARRIED WOMAN

A girlfriend who was married called me up. "I don't knowhow anyone makes relationships work in this town. It's reallyhard. All the temptations. Going out. Drinks. Drugs. Otherpeople. You want to have fun. And if you're a couple, whatare you going to do? Sit in your little box of an apartmentand stare at each other? When you're alone, it's easier," shesaid, a little wistfully. "You can do what you want. You don'thave to go home."

THE BACHELOR OF COCO PAZZO

Years ago, when my friend Capote Duncan was one of themost eligible bachelors in New York, he dated every womanin town. Back then, we were still romantic enough to believethat some woman could get him. He has to fall in lovesomeday, we thought. Everyone has to fall in love, and whenhe does, it will be with a woman who's beautiful and smartand successful. But then those beautiful and smart and successfulwomen came and went. And he still hadn't fallen inlove.

    We were wrong. Today, Capote sits at dinner at CocoPazzo, and he says he's ungettable. He doesn't want a relationship.Doesn't even want to try. Isn't interested in theromantic commitment. Doesn't want to hear about the neurosisin somebody else's head. And he tells women that he'llbe their friend, and they can have sex with him, but that's allthere is and that's all there's ever going to be.

    And it's fine with him. It doesn't even make him sad anymorethe way it used to.

LOVE AT THE BOWERY BAR, PART II

At my table at the Bowery Bar, there's Parker, thirty-two, anovelist who writes about relationships that inevitably gowrong; his boyfriend, Roger; Skipper Johnson, an entertainmentlawyer.

    Skipper is twenty-five and personifies the Gen X doggeddisbelief in Love. "I just don't believe I'll meet the fight personand get married," he said. "Relationships are too intense.If you believe in...