Dear reader,
Welcome to Scrolling Towards Bethlehem: a weekly dispatch about the metaverse brought to you from the dark recesses of my own consciousness.
Just kidding! God — what a nightmare.
This is a simple newsletter about my life, what I’ve been reading, pop culture and the book I’m currently writing: a biography of the trailblazing gay comedian Tommy Sexton.
I’ll share more on that in the coming weeks, but for now, if you don’t know anything about Tommy, I encourage you to read this small tribute I wrote about him for CBC Arts a few years back.
If you enjoy this newsletter, I’d love it if you shared it with others or sent me an email with your thoughts. Especially – duh! – if you are noted book influencer, supermodel, and newly minted author Emily Ratajkowski. Emrata I’m begging you! If you subscribe to my Very Important Newsletter and share it with your millions of followers I promise I’ll give your book an honest try too.
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This week, I’d like to talk to you about a book that changed my life.
I’ve spent the last year and a half immersed in its charms, frustrations, and seemingly endless supply of cringeworthy puns. And try as I might, I can’t stop thinking about it. The characters are part of me now. Each of them appearing initially as archetypes — the slut, the prude, the writer, the feminist — and emerging by the end as fully formed individuals who behave exactly like themselves in every situation they’re thrown into. The writing is so sharp that I frequently imagine how each of them would respond to a dilemma in my own life and feel as sure of their reaction as I would my own close friends. A small part of me even thinks of them as real people, living nearby, just out of frame. I’m in so deep that I’m afraid my critical faculties have been permanently compromised, leaving only an intrusive voice in my head that interjects throughout the day, prefacing every new thought I have with these five words: I couldn’t help but wonder.
The book I’m talking about, of course, is HBO’s hit television series Sex and the City.
In the fall of 2020, my friend Taylor and I found ourselves reeling from two pandemic breakups. We abruptly left the Ontario cities we’d settled in and moved back home: her to PEI and me to Halifax. It was the year the virus spread and all around us, carefully-laid plans were being uprooted like century-old trees in a Category 5 hurricane. It seemed that everyone who wasn’t breaking up was either shacking up, adopting expensive designer dogs, or deciding to use this time of global crisis that was taking so many people out of this world to bring a new one into it
In lieu of copulation or cohabitation, we opted instead to embrace the simple and unconditional pleasures of friendship. When an opportunity came up for us to both move temporarily to St. John’s — the city where we first met — we jumped at the chance to put another island between us and our problems.
In these first few weeks, we danced at clubs, shouted answers at trivia nights, and sing-screamed the Sheryl Crow and Kid Rock verses of Picture to each other at karaoke. With mandatory isolation requirements in full swing for travellers, COVID felt like it was somewhere far, far away. And in a place where hardly anyone from the mainland had visited all year and everyone was starting to get sick of each other, being new in town was a novelty that earned us plenty of invitations.
As October progressed, the words “Halloween Rave” were tossed around like a promise, and on the big night itself gloriously transformed into reality, with at least 200 people cramming into a Water Street basement to dance until dawn. I never made it to the party— having passed out in my Emily in Paris costume long before it even began — but all of my friends did, and in the days that followed as it became clear there would be no COVID-consequences for anyone, I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it being back here in Newfoundland.
Life had an air of unreality to it. The world was burning but the fumes hadn’t yet reached the island. We walked Signal Hill most days and joked to each other that the cure for everything really was sweat, tears, and the sea. And though we were still working remotely, it felt unambiguously like we were on vacation.
The one area we weren’t having much luck in was dating. We were endlessly frustrated by the dearth of eligible single men in St. John’s, and constantly reminded that despite our adventures, we were still alone. We had each other but that wasn’t always enough. But as we entered November, we found solace in television.
We made a pact to watch all of Sex and the City together. Taylor had seen a handful of episodes, and I basically nothing, and we started crushing multiple onesa night — leaning back and enjoying the deep relaxation brought to us by our sublet’s matching Lay-Z-Boy recliners — and gleefully postponing more pressing questions like “Are we happy?” and “What’s next?” in favour of new ones from Carrie.
Classic Carrie-isms like:
-Are we faking more than orgasms?
-Are men just women with balls?
-Are single people modern day lepers?
And of course:
-Are we sluts?
In time, we got used to her unceasing voice-over, and found ourselves genuinely invested in all the characters. We laughed when they said something funny and cried when they were upset. With real life out of the question, and our personal lives frankly a mess, we embraced new avatars instead: our friends Carrie, Samantha, Miranda and Charlotte.
The conversations they had with each other — which explored everything from sex and friendship to love and work — quickly became similar to the ones we had in our own lives. While the ridiculous questions Carrie posed drew us in initially, it was the more realistic ones that kept us up at night. On weekends, we’d sit down for brunch and discuss anything that came to mind, exploring our hopes and dreams and talking about what we really wanted out of life in the process. Sometimes, when something happened that I would normally keep to myself out of shame or embarrassment, I would bring it up anyways, emboldened by this dumb show. It helped me realize the joy in turning painful experiences into future anecdotes. Like the time I went home with a man who smelled like Father Time himself and later bemoaned to Taylor that if my only choice was between a guy who smelled like Selsun Blue and nobody at all, I knew which side I’d be taking.
All that said, it’s sometimes been frustrating to engage with people who see my love of Sex and the City as another stupid affectation. Because despite its present-day reputation as a problematic series about rich white women who lead ostentatious lives in Manhattan, it’s much deeper than that. Given our current preoccupation with privilege — where it seems every piece of writing requires a disclaimer that acknowledges how the author’s experiences sit in comparison to others — I’ve also come to appreciate how Sex and the City has always been clear about its ambitions without apologizing for them. It’s an aspirational fantasy about what happens when food and shelter and wealth are a given and the only thing left to explore is your relationships.
It’s hardly perfect or without fault, but in this portrayal of love and friendship, the show often transcends its reputation to become something more sublime than I would have ever expected.
And just like that, there you have it: My case for why Sex and the City is unquestionably great television, even as it remains set in a fantasy world only reachable by a select few. One that Taylor and I, for a few months in Newfoundland at least, got to peek behind the curtain and experience for ourselves.
Thanks for reading,
Andrew
PS. If you’re looking for a show about rich white woman living in a fantasy world that wants to have its cake and appear to be progressive too, look no further than And Just Like That. It’s admirable to try and create a more inclusive show, but less so when the show itself reads like it was drawn from old SATC scripts that were merged with 2016 Tumblr jargon and delivered via an algorithm.
P.P.S. All that said, obviously I will never stop watching AJLT and all subsequent reboots. I’m there till death do us part, alas.
P.P.P.S. OK - last one. This is nominally a books newsletter and I promise to get back to that next week. I recently finished Family Happiness by Laurie Colwin and The Year of Magical Thinking by Joan Didion and am currently halfway through I Wished by Dennis Cooper. So if you came here for books and not (gasp!) television, please stay tuned!