[media-credit name=’NATALIE WEINBERGER / Herald photo’ align=’alignright’ width=’336′][/media-credit]"Sex and the City's" Evan Handler spoke to a packed crowd of primarily female attendees about his perceptions of life, death and all the uncertainties in between at Hillel Thursday.

Handler, who played Charlotte's husband, Harry Goldblatt, on the hit HBO sitcom, bemused the crowd with whimsical anecdotes from his memoir, "Time On Fire: My Comedy of Terrors," based on his childhood, career and five-year battle with leukemia.

While each story presented a humorous approach to his life, Handler still managed to capture the audience with his intensely personal tales of turmoil and uncertainty.

"Most strange to some people is the fact that I didn't even turn to religion when, at 24 years old … I was found to have acute myelogenous leukemia, the illness that a great number of medical professionals tried to convince me is incurable," he said, adding that, due to the way he was raised, he maintains a more vague and naturalistic belief in a higher power.

In his address, Handler was critical of the way doctors counseled both him and others suffering from various life-threatening ailments.

"For obvious reasons, I think I take great issue with a lot of those labels," Handler said. "To me, nothing should be called incurable and terminal until that person is already dead and buried."

During his fight with leukemia, Handler said he became fascinated with religious concepts like faith and hope.

"A notion that I ran into again and again during those years and [that] I reject utterly, is false hope," he said. "False hope in regard to illness, or love, or romance, or show business, or any business or anything is, to me, just a useless concept."

Handler also read from his upcoming unfinished novel about the years following his illness and how his relationship with his Italian fiancé gave him a more multicultural perspective on life.

Handler said he was surprised when his future wife's parents allowed him and her to sleep in the same bed at their house after meeting him for the first time.

"Her childhood room had been made up like some kind of kiddy-porn honeymoon suite," he mused. "The two single beds had been pushed together and made up as one surrounded by pictures of [her] at 14, 15, and 16 years of age."

Handler also described how he discovered the true value of the European bidet.

"First of all, in regards to the bidet, I always thought it was the French who adored them," he said. "But it turns out the bidet is an essential item in every Italian household of any respectable repute, and I learned the question is on many Italians' minds as how any American can consider themselves to have any respectability at all without washing their asses thoroughly after every bowel movement."

After the address, attendees bombarded Handler with "Sex and the City" questions.

"I thought he was very good. I wasn't expecting him to say what he did say," said UW junior Nora Berdelle, adding she is a "huge, huge" fan. "But we did hear a little bit about 'Sex and the City,' which was fun."