ALMOST CARRIE ~ In Common

For every tourist who pukes on my bus (Almost Carrie, 1.27.12), there is another who is a true delight. After seven years of tours and 55 people per bus, the faces blur, but I do maintain a small collection of favorites. And despite the obvious frivolity of my job, there are still moments when I pause, struck by some strange and wonderful sampling of unfettered humanity that Sex and the City seems to unearth.

There was once a couple that got engaged during my tour—the woman in shock, the man down on one knee in front of “Carrie’s” stoop.  It didn’t matter that I would never want that kind of proposal; once I was there, witnessing the moment, all judgement evaporated.  The joy I felt—that all 55 of us felt—was palpable, and the tears and grins and toasts we shared were as full and genuine as if we were family.

There was the lady who took me aside to tell me that Sex and the City got her through chemo, and I could tell by her expression that she was not exaggerating, that she had needed something to cling to and Sex and the City, thankfully, had been it. There we were at Oneails Bar—pink drinks in hand—talking about her cancer as if we were the only two people on earth.

Then there was the girl who, through some cruel twist of nature, had been born with no feet, yet loved Sex and the City and its extravagant shoes every bit as much as the rest of us. She sighed gently when the bus driver asked if she wouldn’t mind walking to her seat when the handicapped lift got stuck, and later, when he got it straightened out, she waited patiently for it to croak up and down at every stop.

Recently, in the slow winter months, with the weather raw and my buses only half-full, I’ve gotten the chance to spend more time with individual tourists. One woman, Tracey, asked if I’d pose for a picture with her—which many people do—but she was the first person in seven years to later email me the shot:

And two weeks later there was Shamika, a girl so charismatic that she arranged a portrait for the entire group. We were only 15 that day, a tiny showing. Fifteen strangers from all over the world, driving around New York on a bus, with only one thing in common. Somehow, though, that one thing was enough.

Emily Sproch is a writer and a Sex and the City tour guide. Each Friday, she chronicles the fine line between reality and fiction in her column “Almost Carrie.”