“You have put me here a cub, but I will come out roaring like a lion, and I will make hell howl!” That was the tempestuous temperance crusader, Carrie Nation, unbowed by her stint in the slammer.

***

Kelly Killoren Bensimon, the good-looking New York model, actress, author and jewelry designer (there’s no such thing as a simple triple threat anymore), has become one of the most-talked-about celebrities in Manhattan. She is a controversial star of the Bravo reality program, “The Real Housewives of New York City,” and has been mentioned in various guises on Google with more than 440,000 entrees. 

She has a domestic-violence incident in her recent past and is waiting for a verdict in the matter of sentencing. But having known this charmer since she grew up, and even before she wed Elle’s onetime head Gilles Bensimon and had two divine little girls with him, I am inclined to take Kelly’s “side” in the matter of slapping a boyfriend she describes as “obsessive.” He had her arrested. I call that downright unfriendly. Kelly cites the ill-fated “Dorothy Stratton Story” as an example of the kind of involvement that leaves the female of the species unable to get the obsessive one to leave their house and stop harassing.

Kelly and I sat down in my apartment building in the celebrated El Rio Grande restaurant for a chat and by two o’clock PM the same afternoon, with nobody on our side calling in, we turned up on Gawker.com as lunching and “having a business meeting.” There wasn’t much business to it; just two longtime girlfriends chatting.

I asked Kelly about her much-talked-about appearances in the Bravo series. She laughed: “Can you believe I’m the ‘bad girl’ on this show? They have tried to make me into the Angelina Jolie of the reality world. I consider myself so normal. What I’d really like is to find a real man to live with because I want to have another baby. (Kelly and Gilles are divorced but live in the same Manhattan apartment building for the welfare of their daughters.) 

“Gilles and I get along fine and I will always love him as the father of my children. But in the past I felt very insecure as I was raising the girls myself and I felt I was living in a bubble. Now I am ready to reinvent myself and have a real career.”

A real career? Kelly has already written three books and soon she’ll be going to California to launch her “Pocahontas” pave jewelry line at Kitson, a very trendy launch for the glamorous bracelets, earrings and necklaces created by Kelly. “I’ll also be in the Hamptons Classic this summer where I’ll be spending lots of time with my children.”

Kelly goes on to say, “I am an aspirational kind of girl. The “Housewives” show was an opportunity for me. In only three months, however, I became a household name, a favorite of Page Six and all the tabloid magazines. They see me as a bitchy socialite, a bad girl from the Country Club set. But the hardest thing in life is to be true to oneself. And I have a great family backing me up – an older sister, a twin brother and my parents in Illinois.”