‘Sex and the City’ author tells real-life story that inspired Charlotte getting crabs

Ever since Sex and the City hit the airwaves in 1998, there have been sleuths out there trying to determine just how much of it is based on author Candace Bushnell‘s actual life.

Bushnell has made it clear that much of Sarah Jessica Parker‘s character Carrie Bradshaw was yanked directly from her own experiences, but many of the escapades that Samantha (Kim Cattrall), Miranda (Cynthia Nixon), and Charlotte (Kristin Davis) lived through were also from her life or from the lives of those she observed.

On the latest episode of Are You a Charlotte?, Davis’ strangely addictive rewatch podcast, Bushnell discovered there was still one part of herself she had yet to expose to the public. And it involves, ahem, pubic lice.

“[The episode] when I pretend Charlotte pretends to be 27 or whatever, and then I get crabs… that was real?” Davis asked Bushnell, referring to the season 2 episode “Twenty-Something Girls vs. Thirty-Something Women?”

“Yes,” Bushnell said, after detailing a yarn she heard about women who zipped off to the Hamptons and hooked up with twentysomething guys. “But not the part about Charlotte getting the crabs.”

“Okay, okay,” Davis said, thinking the story was about to move on. Not exactly.

“I mean, look, that’s the kind of thing that happens,” Bushnell, who has lived a few lives, continued.

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“I had this, whatever, crazy roommate,” the author recalled. “And she was always having sex. And she got crabs, and we shared an apartment. And guess what?”

“Did you get crabs from your roommate?” Davis asked, anticipating where this was headed.

“I did,” Bushnell confessed.

“Oh, that’s bad!” Davis retorted.

“Because they go on the towel!” Bushnell warned. “Nobody tells you that.”

“No one does,” Davis agreed. “Listen, people. Is some important information.”

“I can’t believe I just said that. That’s probably gonna end up…” Bushnell continued, before trailing off, as if she could envision what we would be sharing with you this afternoon. (Hi Candace!)

“It will be definitely interesting to people, but that’s okay, because we’re educating people,” Davis concluded.

And she’s right. According to the Mayo Clinic you can get public lice, commonly known as crabs, from a towel. Crabs are different from head lice, in that they are shorter and rounder and also, um, more intimate. Crabs are also different from scabies, which is a different kind of parasite that is commonly transmitted by sexual contact — but can also be transmitted by sleeping on your friend’s dirty futon when you are 22. Don’t ask how we know this.

Check out the full episode of Candace Bushnell’s appearance on Are You a Charlotte?, which isn’t all about crabs, below.