How Private Should Sex Lives Be?

Isn't sex a great topic for a blog? I'm too chicken (and smart?) to talk about my sex life or lack thereof in this blog or any other, but I find a certain lawsuit for $20 million fascinating. A former U.S. Senate aide, Jessica Cutler (who wasn't former at the time) divulged lurid details on her "Washingtonienne" blog of her sexual encounters with another Senate aide, Robert Steinbuch, which quickly got linked to another blog, Wonkette, and later became fodder for a book (The Washingtonienne: A Novel). Steinbuch is suing Cutler for $20 million. Whew!

It's beyond me why anyone, especially someone who works in a forum as scrutinized as the U.S. Senate, would put any details of their sex life on the Web. It's even more beyond me why anyone would betray a lover, former or current, by revealing their, shall we say, idiosyncracies. "Sex in the City" is one thing -- I loved the one about Carrie farting for the first time with Mr. Big -- but real life is quite another. To do that is disrespectful, vengeful and/or stupid. Once that stuff is out there, there's no taking it back. Not only is it a total betrayal, whether the relationship ended badly or not, it also usually damages the reputation of the accuser, er, revealer, at least as much as the accusee or revealee.

I've been a journaler since age 10. I have been known to write in some detail about all aspects of my life, since my journal is my therapy more than it is a chronicle of my life or even a commentary on life in general. And keeping journals help me to think my life is real and enables me to revisit events to see if I remember them as I experienced them at the time. It's amazing what the mind does to an event over time. Much of what I write is mundane, repetitive and hardly good writing. But it's meant for me and me only.

If I knew today that I would be dead tomorrow, I'd burn my journals. Not knowing that (and hoping not), I am willing them to someone I trust with the agreement that they will not be released to anyone for any purpose until 25 years after my death. By then, the innocent and guilty parties (some of whom are disguised) will either be dead or beyond caring. Hopefully, anyway. If I live 25 more years, that will certainly be true. It's not all that interesting anyway, probably only to me.

Meanwhile, I wonder what Cutler was thinking and if she regrets going public with her exploits. I bought her book awhile ago on a whim but haven't read it. Maybe I will dig it up now and at least scan it. But I ain't puttin' my own adventures on any blog any time soon. (Note to Mr. X: You're welcome.)

Stereotypes Alive and Well in BMW-land

Have you seen the TV commercial that has two children, a girl and a boy, under the Christmas tree opening a present that so excites them that they scream for half if not most of the commercial?

It took seeing it at least four times before I could have told you that it was for BMW instead of some toy for adults or children. Well, you could certainly call a BMW a toy for adults, albeit quite an expensive one, but it's not something you can put in a box under the Christmas tree.

The screaming is obnoxious enough. But what bothers me more and more as I keep seeing it on TV is the way the boy and girl are portrayed. The boy is clearly the dominant figure in the commercial; the girl is clearly the follower. The boy has possession of the box, even though it's apparent that it's for both of them. He makes big, possessive, circular motions on the top of the box while shrilly screaming, whereas the girl's hands remain on the periphery of the box. He merely screams. She's the one who yells "Thank you!" over and over. He never even looks at her, not once. She is focused on what he is doing through the whole 30 seconds. He raises his fist and thrusts it while loudly chanting, "Yes! Yes! Yes!" She does the same but only in sync with the gestures and timing of the boy.

BMW, what the heck are you thinking?!? Don't you know that in the majority of cases the woman makes the primary decision as to what car is purchased, even if it isn't for her? Why would you perpetuate the stereotypes of the boy being in charge and the girl following his lead? Even the fact that she's the one crying "Thank you!" only plays to the idea that men can be unruly and do what they want and women follow along behind doing the right thing in the situation, being the polite, obedient, thoughtful, considerate one.

Rude boys grow into rude men, and docile little people-pleasing girls grow up to need therapy. Fortunately, I know many men who weren't allowed to get away with screaming bloody murder even if it was in delight. And many who could and to some degree still do. And unfortunately, I know some women who are as rude as any obstreperous young boy ever thought of being. And many nice ones. And they all buy cars. I don't know about them, but this commercial makes me want to go look at Nissans or Cadillacs or Lexuses or Jaguars, but not BMWs.

The Fantasy of More Time

For the past several years, when I'd feel overwhelmed at work, or bored or tired or had some passive-aggressive colleague whose antics prompted me to want to strangle him, I'd fantasize about time off. No work. No having to rouse myself early every day, squeeze myself between two surly businessmen on the 3-seat row on a rush-hour train, get belched out into the workday for all those hours that could be spent so many other joyful, satisfying ways.

In this fantasy world of less stress and more time, I'd see myself on a tranquil lake in a small, simple boat, the kind that movies love to put shy lovers in, just loving the mild sunshine and peaceful environs. That's pretty funny because in real life I can't fathom ever going out on a little rickety boat like that, especially alone, and I'm not much of a water person anyway. Give me the mountains any day, both for excitement (I used to be a pretty good skiier) and emotional and mental nourishment (the mountains just inject me with an idyllic, heavenly, swoony feeling).

My fantasy also includes working at some no-brainer, no-stress job, such as working for Starbucks. I have friends who are Starbucks veterans and they tell me it's quite stressful as well as physically demanding. But hey, it's a fantasy so job conditions can be any way I create them to be. It wouldn't be Starbucks anyway, because I MUCH prefer Dunkin' Donuts coffee. It's just that Starbucks stores have much more appealing atmosphere (can't say that I've even seen atmosphere in a DD) and a cachet that both fit well in fantasies.

Now I have that time that I've fantasized about for many years. I got laid off a month ago tomorrow -- well, my position has been eliminated or some such corporate gobbledygook -- and I don't have to do the daily grind right now. How is it? Is it as great as I'd envisioned? Is it fabulous and wonderful?

Oooooooh, yes!!!

I have puh-lenty to do in my workless life, believe me. I have had to tell people that I have not had time to get back to them, meet them, send them something I'd planned to, etc. But it's all *my time*. And I am loving it.

My friends have time envy (like penis envy -- which I get every time I have to pee BADLY when I'm in a car -- only better). They fantasize like I used to. They glamorize my days, thinking I can sleep late, eat bon bons on the couch while watching "The View," go to the gym when it's not crowded, meet friends for long lunches or a drink in the middle of the afternoon, take the trips I haven't had time for, catch up on all of my hobbies, read all of the classics, learn a language, take a nap in the afternoon, talk to friends I haven't talked to in years, write that book that's dying to emerge, clean out all of my closets and smile all day long.

Is it like that? Sure! Of course, I haven't done nearly enough of those things. But I could. And yes, it's as wonderful as I fantasized it would be. Relaxing, re-energizing, therapeutic, fun! I just won't want to do this forever. Probably. Ask me in another month. Or two.

4,844 Miles To Go

When I told a former colleague and friend that I would be traveling from coast to coast three times in two days and why, she said, "You have to write about it!" So I kept a sort of flying diary yesterday when I flew to Los Angeles and back. As usual, it proved to be more of a journey than just from one place to another and back. (This is long, so if you don't read it all, at least read the parts in bold.)

Friday I went from Phoenix to San Diego to Newark to wrap up a business trip. Best thing about my flight back: the tasty, fork-tender short ribs dinner entree when I got upgraded to first class. A surprise -- good food on an airline!

I got back home about 1:00 a.m. With all of two hours of sleep under my belt, on Saturday morning I left my house at 5:30 a.m. and flew from Newark International Airport to Los Angeles (LAX) and an hour later was on a plane back to Newark. Now why would I -- or anyone -- do that? Because I was short 4,844 miles of the 50,000 miles I need by Dec. 31 to make it to the Premier Executive level in United Airlines' Mileage Plus frequent flyer program.

Let me explain.

For several years I've been a loyal United Airlines flyer. By and large they go where I want to go, they're reliable, and, best of all, they've got that extra leg room in their "Economy Plus" area on their planes for Premier members and above. I'm tall and not a small person so I will do nearly anything for more room. Nearly.

I've been Premier and I've been Premier Executive and I like Premier Executive. You have to fly 25,000 miles in a calendar year or go on 30 segments to qualify for Premier, 50,000 miles or 60 segments for Premier Executive. When you reach either level, you can check in at the airport in a much shorter line, at some airports go through a much shorter security line and always board flights in the first group, which means you get your carry-on in the bins first. It's extremely selfish but those perks add up to major time-savings over a year. Premiers get a 25% mileage bonus on flights, Premier Executives get 100% -- and those miles are good for upgrades, free trips and Red Carpet Club membership. You can sit in the Economy Plus seats and choose them online, but only on United.com, not through travel agents or Travelocity-type sites. There are other perks but these are the ones that are important to me.

When I figured my mileage for 2006, including an upcoming trip, I came up 4,844 short of qualifying for Premier Executive. If you're that close, in January United usually offers a way to get there but it's the least cost-effective way to do it. Flying to Los Angeles and back, if you get a good fare, is cheaper than buying your way in later. You have to actually fly; you can't just buy the ticket and have it count. So I chose that route. All in one day. And that day was yesterday.

I caught the 5:53 a.m. New Jersey Transit train north and took the AirTrain from the Newark International Airport station to Terminal A. Rode the AirTrain with a boy-next-door-looking young Marine who was just back from his second tour of duty in Iraq. He said, "It's not as bad over there as people think," and then told me he'd seen fellow Marines get killed right in front of him. It was hard to hear him over the incessant, intrusive recorded voice over the loudspeaker listing every airline at each train stop, but he railed on for awhile about thinking we shouldn't be there. "They're going to kill each other anyway -- we don't have to be there for that," he said. Our flights both left at 8:15 a.m., so I was going to invite him to be my guest in the Red Carpet Club but he was going on American Airlines -- different entry to those gates -- so that wouldn't work.

For once, I was traveling with no laptop computer and no carry-on luggage. My oversize Vera Bradley bag held the essentials for a trip like this: my Michael Connelly thriller, my journal, an empty 20-ounce soda bottle, one peanut butter and bologna sandwich made 24 hours earlier, one turkey and cheese half-sandwich purchased 18 hours earlier, a single-serving bag of Ruffles poached from the Red Carpet Club and a plastic bag packed with several 4-packs of small creme-filled cookies, all left over from the trip the day before since I got upgraded then to first class on the long leg.

I sailed through Security and ducked into the Red Carpet Club. Whatever money or miles I pay each year for my membership there is so worth it! I popped two strawberry-banana yogurt cups in my purse and got one of the attendants to fill my empty 20-ounce plastic soda bottle with Diet Coke. I am never without the latter when I fly; that way I can drink it when I get thirsty, not when they deign to serve me. I am addicted to Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke but with the no-liquids rule I have to settle for the plain jane Diet Coke I can get at the airport.

A few minutes before boarding, I hustled to the gate. The man in the seat next to me at the gate and I started chatting and it turns out that he's a 1K flyer (flies 100,000 miles a year, wow!) on United, and guess what he was doing! Same as I was, assuring his status with a LAX-Newark turnaround trip. He'd taken the red-eye in and was going right back on this early morning flight. So I wasn't the only crazy one.

Our plane, an A319, wasn't very crowded. I had an exit row window seat with no seat in front of me and no one in the middle seat, my idea of coach class heaven. Things got interesting after we boarded. There was a contingent of probably 30 people from (presumably) China on the flight and one of them parked herself in an exit row seat. No one else was assigned to that seat but at length the flight attendant asked to see all of our boarding passes in the exit rows because she knew who belonged there and who didn't. The woman tried stalling, seemingly unable to find her boarding pass. The flight attendant patiently and sweetly waited until the elusive stub was found. She made the woman move to the area behind the exit rows, which I fondly call cattle-class hell. United has very generous Economy Plus space but their regular coach class seating is torture, beyond the limits of human decency. If that's not incentive to keep my Premier-something status, I don't know what is. (Shhh, don't tell United. I don't want to encourage them to keep their sardine-spaced regular coach seating.)

After a brief (45-minute) scare that we might have a longer delay while they found and fixed a small leak in the system that supplies oxygen to the face masks, we were on our way. The movie was "The Da Vinci Code," a movie I never wanted to see in the first place and which I saw on my way to San Diego last week. I request a window seat on long flights so I can control the window shade. I hate flying in the dark during the day and no amount of pressure from flight attendants or fellow passengers will make me lower my shade. I will never be voted Ms. Passenger Congeniality.

Halfway through the movie, the Chinese woman whom the flight attendant earlier shooed from the exit row had sneaked back to a different exit row seat, as had a fellow countryman. The flight attendant told them both they would have to go back to their assigned seats. Five minutes later when she came back, neither had budged. She used sweeping hand gestures to motion then back to the sardine section and they moved with quite visible disdain.

With the exception of a "closed" lavatory ("Someone made a mess," the flight attendant told me), one of just two for an entire coach section, it was a normal, uneventful flight. We arrived on time.

With an hour to go before my flight back, I wanted to get my blood going. With 5-1/2 hours of sitting and another 5 or 6 to go, walking felt good.

When I approached my gate to go back, the gate was filled with people and, fearing a crowded flight, I felt waves of dread and fatigue sucking me under. Everything and everybody irritated me like I get when my blood sugar is low, which was not the case. I thought, God, how will I make it in another plane if I'm squished in cheek to cheek with someone else for 5 hours?

But Providence was good to me. I had a window seat in an exit row in a 767 and in the 2-3-2 seat configuration no one was next to me. Big sigh of relief!

I never or rarely fly in 767s, which became embarrassingly clear. At the start of the flight, the purser announced that movies would be available on four channels. There was nothing I wanted to see but I thought I'd catch the surprisingly truly funny "Talladega Nights" again. I saw no screens and thought maybe they would drop down but wondered how we could each view different movies. I wondered an hour or so after we took off why they hadn't started the movie yet.

Nearly three hours into the flight, I navigated my way down the narrow aisle to the lavatory and on the way back, I saw that everyone had a screen built into the back of the seat in front of them. Aha! But the bulkhead and exit row seats didn't have the screens. Oh, so we get gypped, I thought. They should tell people that they don't get movies if they choose those seats, I thought. Then I saw that one person in a bulkhead seat in front of me had a screen that came up on an arm from beneath one of the armrests. Eventually I found the release button on mine but it took me several minutes to figure out how to turn the darn thing on. I flown nearly 50,000 miles every year for the last half dozen and I couldn't figure it out so I had to laugh at myself. Finally I did and voila! I was just in time for the credits.

I'd been entertaining myself with United's Hemispheres magazine, found in every seat pocket. Ah, but just try to find a pristeen one with the crossword puzzle not filled in or the Sudoku puzzle not attempted or some pages torn out. Since the plane wasn't full, I tried three and finally found one with the Sudoku puzzle page there and unmarked. The crossword puzzle, however, someone had completed. I immediately started filling in one of the four Sudoku puzzles, but after a good hour at least, I'd run into a snag -- some number or other was clearly wrong and even with that, I'd probably only filled in 1/3 of the boxes. (Hey, I'm new at Sudoku.) So of course I ripped out the page to work on it later.

We landed at Washington's Dulles International Airport about 8:30 p.m. My last flight left at 9:40. It was a tiny EMB145, with a 1-2 seat configuration. I got on the side with one seat; the people in two seats were v-e-r-y cozy. I could barely walk upright. And some jerk with a megaphone-loud voice was talking business on his wireless set at 9:30 on a Saturday night. I was glad when all cell phones had to be off.

Our pilot or first officer looked a lot like Steve, the large fiance on "My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance" reality show of a couple of summers ago. His substantial body filled up the entire aisle space and he had to stoop to walk so he wouldn't bump his head. But he flew the plane just fine.

That flight was short, smooth and a visual delight. The small plane flew low enough so we could see more below. The East coast was nearly all city, town, city, town, and the lights and patterns from above resembled a cross between the paintings of Jackson Pollock and Thomas Kinkade.

We landed at 10:37 p.m., well ahead of our scheduled time of 10:59 p.m. That enabled me to walk through the nearly empty, nothing-open Newark Terminal A to the AirTrain and, despite rerouting for maintenance purposes, I made it to the warm waiting room at NJ Transit/Amtrak's Newark International Airport Station. I easily made the 11:30 train to my little station, drove the 3-1/2 miles home, yawning, and at midnight my 18-1/2-hour marathon flying day was over.

Actually, it was one of the easier, more comfortable flying days I've had. And I'm glad I did it and that it will get me to Premier Executive. But that doesn't mean I want to do it again any time soon. Today I indulged myself in the luxuries of sleeping prone and drinking Black Cherry Vanilla Diet Coke. Ah, life is good.

Love and Power: Are They Mutually Exclusive?

Okay, here's my confession: Every day my Replay TV (competitor to TiVo) records "Oprah." At night, or once a week, I catch up. I watch some of them and I am not interested in some so I just erase them.

I'm more of sucker for the celebrity interviews than the person-on-the-street stuff, extraordinary things happening to ordinary people, etc.* Nah, give me a celeb and give me some insight into who they really are and what makes them tick. Danny DeVito's (allegedly) drunken appearance on "The View" earlier this week gave me a new angle on him -- he's a cute, happy, loquacious drunk -- and the ladies. Rosie O'Donnell very kindly rescued him by pulling him onto her lap and cuddling him like a baby. Barbara Walters was pissed at his behavior and tried to get him to talk about his movie that he was there to promote. Joy Behar and Elisabeth Hasselbeck just went with the flow.
*There are exceptions -- I just wept while watching Oprah's inspiring "Pay It Forward" show of Nov. 27. Wow.

As a journalist who has never covered the celebrity beat, I've only interviewed three of them: Annette Funicello, Patrick Duffy (Bobby on "Dallas") and the late Buck Owens. I found Annette and Patrick way too guarded so I didn't get much insight into them. My day spent with Buck while writing about country radio station KNIX in Phoenix, which he owned, was a truly wonderful and enlightening experience. What a sexy, charismatic man! Yes, Buck Owens! In person he was hot! I felt a special chemistry with him and felt like we were pals as well as journalist and celebrity. Such is the magic of a truly charming man. (Yes, Buck Owens! Get over it.)

On the Nov. 30 show of "Oprah," Oprah and Ellen Burstyn were talking about giving their power away to men. They both said they had done that in the past. Ellen finished talking about her own struggle with that by saying, "And finally you have to be able to say, 'It's all right -- I can be powerful and be a woman and be loved all at once.'"

I was astonished. I have long admired Ellen Burstyn -- her incredible acting and her as a person. She plays strong, dignified, intelligent women. That usually means powerful, if not toweringly powerful at least personally powerful. To hear that she's been "giving her power away to men" was unfathomable to me.

I had such a hard time relating to the struggle of being powerful vs. being a woman and being loved. I have been in love and loved more than a few times but can't remember a time when I felt I had less power in a relationship than outside it. In fact, I feel much more alive and happy and beautiful and able to do anything when I'm in a relationship. Even when they have gone bad, they've been sad and painful and frustrating but even when I didn't feel powerful when or after they ended, I didn't feel like I gave my power away to anyone. And I always counted on my friends to infuse me with their power to hurry along my healing.

Maybe it's because I was an only child that I always relied on myself, my friends, my parents and Providence to take care of me, guide me, soothe me and fuel me every day. I just knew that someone would always be there, even if I didn't know exactly who. And they have been. Even strangers. Especially strangers. You just never know where help will come from. And knowing you can get help for whatever you're going through makes you feel powerful.

I think only children tend to be cherished, doted on, attended to and encouraged that they can do and be anything. When someone important to you has faith in you, you do feel powerful. I am so fortunate and grateful that I can't relate to the idea of giving my power away to a man. Only The Man. :)