'She Used To Be a Real Party Girl'

That's back in the 1980s. But now she's a real Silky Girl.

The inexorable march toward full media exposure continues, as the New York Post dares to note some background on the mother of John Edwards' love child.

RIELLE Hunter - the woman reported by the National Enquirer to be John Edwards' mistress and mother of his love child - is no stranger to fans of Jay McInerney. The novelist dated the blonde for a few months in the late 1980s and based his book "Story of My Life" on her.

Hunter was known as Lisa Druck when McInerney met her at Nell's in 1987. "She's a nice girl," the author told Page Six. "She used to be a real party girl.

"When she wasn't out at nightclubs, she was taking acting classes. We dated for only a few months, but in that period, I spent a lot of time with her and her friends, whose behavior intrigued and appalled me to such an extent that I ended up basing a novel on the experience," McInerney recalled.

"It was narrated in the first person from the point of view of an ostensibly jaded, sexually voracious 20-year-old who was inspired by Lisa. I certainly thought of Alison Poole as a sympathetic and ultimately endearing character."

McInerney said he lost track of Hunter after she moved to California. He was unaware she had moved back to Manhattan and was making videos for the Edwards presidential campaign last year, before the supermarket tabloid reported she was the former North Carolina senator's mistress.

Edwards and Hunter flatly denied the Enquirer's report. "It is completely untrue, ridiculous," Edwards said. "I've been in love with the same woman for 30-plus years." His wife, Elizabeth, is battling cancer.

One of Edwards' staffers, Andrew Young, a married father of three, claimed he was the child's dad. But no father at all is listed on the birth certificate for Frances Quinn Hunter, who was born Feb. 27.