Rebecca and I made it a habit to run around Madrid’s Retiro Park on sunny days.  Always, we went without makeup.  Unshowered.  Hair in messy ponytails.  Mismatched, though admittedly snug, running shorts.  Not exactly the most glamorous of looks, but from the cat calls given to us by male passersby, you’d have thought we were Halle Berry and Julia Roberts on Oscar night.

Back in the States, men seem to be equally bowled over by female joggers and, in general, get googly eyed around exercising women.  Of course, when women work out, our cheeks are flushed, our lips are moist and we’re panting.  Plus, everything female and pretty on our bodies bounces around.  Doesn’t take a Freudian scholar to figure out the fantasies the sight might stir in the male mind.  Maybe we’re running slo-mo in guys’ heads as they imagine us like Pamela Anderson, Baywatching across a Malibu beach rather than hoofing it on a Bally’s treadmill.

The other day, I went to pick up my one exorbitantly priced beauty expense: a $35 bottle of shampoo.  In my world, this is costly but I know there are legions of women who would spend three times that just for the bottled water with which they wash their overly pampered manes.

Anyway, I hadn’t done much to pretty myself up that afternoon.  My face was naked save for a line of lip gloss, my hair was in a tight, somewhat fuzzy bun, and I was wearing a bland T-shirt over a boring ol’ pair of leggings.  Still, I got checked out more than I had the previous night painting the town red.  Two men asked for my number.  By the time I got to the store and held that $35 bottle of shampoo, I couldn’t help but ask, “Why in God’s name am I spending this money?”

An article I read said women spend $13,000 on makeup alone in their lifetime.  Imagine the green we’re spending on haircuts, bikini waxes and, Lord help us, clothes.  Used to be all the luxury makeup and beauty products were for rich, old gals, the rest of us went to CVS.  Nowadays, entire cosmetic lines and boutique shops have opened up to sell us $50 eye shadow kits and $120 moisturizing cream.  Lots of gals feel they can no longer get away with lip gloss and a cute haircut; they gotta get their eyebrows sculpted, teeth bleached, foreheads Botoxed, biceps and thighs yoga’ed into oblivion.  The American cosmetics industry makes over $20 billion a year, while beauty salons alone gross $72 billion of our hard-earned cash.  And for what, if dudes can just as easily drool over us doing downward facing dog?

Still, there are two dazzling conclusions to be drawn from this discovery.  First, maybe we don’t need to spend the money and time to look like we’re walking the red carpet with Halle and Julia when we’re living normal lives.  Men want us to look good, but they seem to like us just as much when we look real.

Perhaps the more fun conclusion to draw is that men no longer have a leg to stand on when they complain about the money they spend on dates with women.  These days, a guy may spend $150 bucks on dinner, drinks and a movie.  Jack that up to $200 if anyone wants a snack at the theater.

While some of us gals look decent without breaking the bank, think of what those trendy, über-stylish women spend to go on that same date: mani/pedi ($60), facial ($90), eyebrow sculpting ($25), bikini wax ($70), hair style ($65) and pre-date yoga class ($20).  A $330 price tag for one night.

Dudes, you so need to be the ones putting out.

I keep dreaming about my ex.  The Big Ex, everyone’s got one.  Y’know, the person with whom you had the longest, most emotionally labyrinthine romantic attachment?  My Big Ex keeps sneaking into the theater of my mind, hassling me while I’m trying to dream about cream pies and booty calls with Lenny Kravitz.

In the dreams, Big Ex wants me again or I’m asking if he still loves me or we’re making out like teenagers.  In a dream the other night, we were at an amusement park in Tokyo.  He was wearing a police uniform and I was riding a camel (my dreams have always been colorful).  He comes over as I’m doing a tap dance on a picnic table and asks if we can become reacquainted in the biblical sense.  I say, “Man, you’re married now.  I don’t think you should be putting your thing anywhere near my situation.”  But I do it anyway.

Strange, because my relationship with Big Ex is ancient history, it’s positively Byzantine in its ancientness.  Besides, I was the one who left on account of his workaholism and mélange of personal issues.  So why has he suddenly popped back into my psyche?

A few weeks ago, I dreamt of my college boyfriend, a handsome, erudite gentleman whose greatest flaw was a slight problem with gas.  In the dream, we were drinking coconut milk out of a cantaloupe and fighting about the woman with whom he was also sleeping.  A few nights later, I had a quite amorous dream about a 22-year-old hunk o’ burnin’ love I was crushing on back in ‘07.  In it, we were in Spain and he was my boyfriend.  As we walked the streets, all the Spaniards looked skeptically at us as if they knew I shouldn’t be dating a dude whose greatest accomplishment in life thus far was turning legal.

After months of ex-boyfriend dreaming, I finally phoned a friend getting her PhD in psychology.  ‘Why,’ I wanted to know, ‘were these men assailing me in my sleep?’

“Other people in your dreams are not actually themselves,” said my friend.  “They’re aspects of yourself you’re unwilling to face.  The dreams help you figure out what you want from the current challenges in your life.  When you dream about Big Ex, you’re really dreaming about you.”

Dreaming about these men shows me what I want at this moment in my life.  So, I want to be a manic workaholic who cries every morning during winter?  I want to become a snotty academic with irritable bowels?

My friend suggested there were deeper issues I had to extract from the plots of these nighttime reveries.  She invited me to consider what qualities these men symbolize.  The qualities I came up with were anxiety, fear and immaturity.  For certain, these qualities have been some of the jewels around which the treasure chest of my relationship life has thus far been built.  Even more certain is my current resolve to steer clear of any human being who would bring said qualities into an interaction with me.

Generally speaking, I’ve never felt more on the verge of a breakthrough.  The last couple years, I’ve seen people come and go, seen some windows close while others stay open ajar, had fresh insights and spiritual discoveries, new dreams replacing worn-out ambitions, unhealthy patterns exposed and toppled to the ground.

So lately, I’ve been enjoying one of those delectable moments when you watch the book called “The Past” close for good.  Ever have those moments when you feel the direction of life changing because you want different things, because you feel yourself drawn to new kinds of people?  You know something’s changing, some day soon life will no longer be the same.  The moment is pregnant with possibility.

Maybe this is the point of these boyfriend dreams.  I don’t want to rekindle things with Big Ex or cozy up to the flatulent professor.  Maybe I’m revisiting the past so I can step away from it once and for all.  Maybe these men are visiting so I can say one last goodbye.  A door is opening and though I’m unsure of what’s on the other side, I know few of these people, these bad habits or old ways of doing the business of life are coming through it with me.

Hallelujah…

Our story went down like this:

I meet him at a bar the night after Christmas ‘08.  I’m with friends, he’s drinking alone.  He’s tall and gorgeous with black hair so dark you’d think it would chill your fingers to run them through.  When I sit beside him, he says, “whoever gets the bartender’s attention first gets to spank the other.”

I should slap him or at least roll my eyes.  I don’t because he makes my knees quake.  He says he’s French, name’s Nicolas.  I ask what he does for a living.

“Mergers and acquisitions.”

The hair on the back of my neck rises.  “Have you ever read ‘American Psycho?’”

“Yes.”  He flashes a sinister grin.  “And I’m going to pull out your fingernails with pliers.”

Two strokes of crazy, but I’m still there.  Nicolas is beguiling.  He speaks in caustic melodies as if the words are coming too quickly, he moves as if his soul is on the verge of eruption.  He’s brilliant, funny and intense, centering in as if I’m the only other person on the planet.

He tells me his family didn’t call from France to wish him a Merry Christmas and he spent the day alone.  But this isn’t the worst that’s ever happened to him.  If I want to know more, he says, I have to go on a date with him.

And there I am the next night, transfixed by this icy hot tower of masculine perfection and social dis-ease.  Nicolas talks a mile a minute about the hunt of big business and the sweet taste of success.  Suddenly, he’s fascinated by me again and asks about my family.  I describe my kinfolk but he’s intrigued most by the father I never knew.  Nicolas, turns out, is a father himself.

After years of Nicolas devoting himself to merging and acquiring and moving back and forth to the US, his ex felt neglected.  So she took his son to some remote French village and forbids Nicolas from seeing him.  They’ve been battling for half a decade.

“She and her family make lies about me.”  His teeth are gnashing.  “They said I fed him ice cream when I know he’s lactose intolerant.  They say I cheated on her, this isn’t true.”

Nicolas is talking about this much longer than appropriate, his voice rising, everyone around us getting edgy.

“Now,” Nicolas continues, “they have taken a restraining order against me.”

I back away.  He questions my nervousness so I say, “you can’t just ‘get’ a restraining order on someone.  There has to be a reason.”

Nicolas glares.  “Can’t you give me the benefit of the doubt?  I’m trying to confide in you, to let you see who I am, not everything is perfect.  But you put me in a box.  I ask only for compassion.  Do you know what it’s like to have your child taken from you?  I told you because I want you to understand me.  And because you don’t know your father, I want you to know there are men in the world who care about their children.”

What a master of the mind fuck!  How has this person managed to make me feel guilty, judgmental and heartbroken in one fell swoop?  I realize I’ve been there for hours, listening to him leap from one subject to the next.  He says inappropriate things to other patrons, makes weird comments about my body and sex, then chastises himself as if even he’s shocked to hear himself make such remarks.

“I could get laid whenever I wish.”  Nicolas scans the room.  “But these women are like biscuits in milk.  They dissolve immediately.  But you are solid, you understand me.”

I feel as if I’m standing at the edge of the tornado in Twister, watching things get sucked in and chucked out.  I’m waiting to get hit by a stray cow.

“You’re my soul mate,” Nicolas says.  “I’ve told you everything and you’re still here.”

Nicolas takes me in his arms and I become the pussycat trying to get away from Pepe LePew.  ‘Yes, I’m still here,’ I wonder.  ‘Is being alone worse than this?’

I take a cab home, Nicolas sends a text letting me know we’re finished.  Despite considering me a soul mate less than an hour before, he now feels emotionally unavailable.  Relieved, I spend the next several months joking about him with friends, imitating his manic gestures and referring to him as ‘French Psycho.’

But seeing Nicolas the other night, trying to endear himself to yet another woman wasn’t such a hoot.  Everyone has reasons why they can’t make relationships work.  They’re insecure, too picky, damaged.  But these are things we have control over.  Imagine being a stunningly handsome, whip smart, super successful man who can’t keep a woman, a wife, or even his own family and child in his life because of a sickness he can’t control.  That’s not funny.  That’s sad.

Lots of women have mothers who nag them about their figures, wonder aloud why their daughters haven’t found a decent fella or tsk disapprovingly about the way they raise their kids.  Not mine.  For the most part, my mother leaves me to my own devices.  Or so I thought.

According to a study by the University of Western Australia, the overt ways mothers try to influence their daughters’ personal lives don’t hold a candle to their more dire biological hand-me-downs.  Scientists studied the DNA of 150 college students and found “the more varied [her] genes…the more boyfriends a woman was likely to have,” the assumption being genetic variation leads to attraction.

The study was cited in an inspiring online article called “Still Single?  Not as Skinny as You’d Like?  Blame Your Mom.”  While few activities are more satisfying than condemning others for your own personal failures, the article is misleading, considering any person’s genetic makeup depends on a mother and a father.  Still, the theory is this: if your dumb mother mates with a man whose genes are too similar to hers, dudes aren’t gonna dig you.  Conversely, if she’s sharp enough to breed with someone from the other side of the genetic fence, well, attach a revolving door to your bedroom.

I’m no scientist, but this theory has lots of holes.  How does having more boyfriends necessarily ensure commitment and marriage?  I know at least five women from my high school who married, and are still married to, the guys who pinned carnations to their dresses at senior prom.  They’ve only had one “boyfriend” during their entire adult lives.  On the other hand, I know tons of women who’ve gone through men like Tiger goes through porn stars, yet still cry themselves to sleep each night because no guy presents a ring.

The study, or more accurately the article based on the study, suggests women with a melting pot for a genetic code should have men beating down their doors with marriage proposals.  But if you believe other stats, most marriages in the US are still made up of people from like backgrounds.  People may wade across the gene pool while dating, but unfortunately, they seem to go back to their side of the tank come settlin’ down time.

And here’s poor Jennifer Aniston again, the go-to girl in any discussion about women relationship-hunting men avoid like the plague.  The article uses her to prove its point that uninteresting genetics doom one to singledom.  But further research shows Aniston’s dad was of Greek heritage and her mother was Scottish and Spanish.  Thus, she should have lots of boyfriends.  And well, hasn’t she?  Why, come to think of it, she’s also had a husband.

Comparing oneself to Jennifer Aniston feels like romantic suicide, but admittedly, there are similarities between us.  I’ve got a genetic mix, too, with African, Italian, Irish, English and German blood coursing through my veins.  I suppose I should thank my mother for her procreative wisdom.  And, like Jen, I’ve had a marriage, and a handful of relationships intermingled with periods of romantic drought.  I’d say that’s par for the course for most people.  In fact, I’d say Jen and I have had fairly robust romantic lives thus far.  Is this because of or in spite of our blend of DNA?

I think universities and magazine writers just want to create controversy, so come up with flimsy facts and build worlds of truths around them.  I mean, I just disproved this DNA theory in seven hundred words.  Where’s my six-figure research stipend?

So many reasons are blamed for the state of our relationships: feminism, genetics, male psychological dysfunction, women in the work place, the advent of birth control, economics, education gaps.  It’s hard to accept we’re having so much trouble making relationships happen.  Love may be about scientific truths and social realities, but it’s also about luck and just following the natural course of life.  Ultimately, we’ve got to accept this, ignore the research and leave poor mom alone.

First, you were generous enough to spread your luscious seed among the most magnificent females our culture has on offer: Jennifer Love Hewitt, Jessica Simpson, Lindsay Lohan.  Goddesses all!  Next, you charmed the Queen of Broken Hearts, the unfortunate Jennifer Aniston.  And we have been lucky to have you share with us every detail of the affair, including its tragic end brought on by your valiant quest to find the “Joshua Tree of vaginas” and your “tweeting too much.”  Indeed, dear John, the world is a cruel place for lovers. 

And now, the admiration you have garnered for your records, your multitude of talents, even your philanthropic gestures has been buried by your douche-baggery.  In a Rolling Stone article from January, you admitted women have begun to consider “blowing me off [as] the new sucking me off.”  You let us in on the relentlessness of your own masturbation, how the act is a “hot whirlpool for my brain” and that you’ve masturbated yourself “out of serious problems.”  

In a recent issue of Playboy, you tell us how much you love porn and how the immensely gifted and unmistakably Venusian Jessica Simpson was your drug, a “sexual napalm” of a woman you say you wanted to “snort,” a celestial being for whom you would “start selling all my shit just to keep fucking.”   

I can’t understand why any woman would repel your advances.  You, John Mayer, are a dream. 

But I must admit you’ve hurt me, dear friend.  When asked about your affairs with black women, you said, “I don’t think I open myself to it.  My dick is sort of like a white supremacist.  I’ve got a Benetton heart and a fuckin’ David Duke cock.”  

I would call you an asshole but that might play into your self-aggrandizing need to be reviled.  I would call you a racist, but I can only imagine how painful it must be for a soul as sensitive and good as yours to have a bigot living in your pants. 

Unfortunately, I’ve been involved with men like you, most notably my very first boyfriend.  Peter was also desperate for attention and desperate to rid himself of his own psychological chaos by thrusting his private thoughts into the world.  Like you, he chipped away so masterfully at his own inner censor, he offended everyone in sight.  In childhood, he’d been a nerdy, anxiety-ridden fatso no girl would kiss, until, like you, he miraculously turned into a swan.  Thus, he became an insecure playboy who went through women like a chubby kid goes through soda pop.  He was non-committal, he was lousy in bed, he was a jerk.  And, like you, women adored him until he started to implode. 

I suppose this letter is for you and all the men in the world like you.  John, you are no ladies’ man.  You are an awkward, insecure kid.  You are still the sad boy who could only experience erotic pleasure all alone beneath his Star Wars bed sheets.    

Perhaps you need friends instead of Twitter followers.  Perhaps you need women who are intellectual powder kegs rather than “sexual napalm.”  Perhaps you need to get your shit together so you can be the person you seem to want to be. 

I offer you the same sympathy I offer Peter and all the men I’ve known who were stuck in their own angst.  I’m glad you’ve found music as a receptacle for the frustration in your soul.  But why must it be women who receive your bile?

Unless the person’s an athlete.  Then we should objectify them ‘til the cows come home. 

My political sisters are getting into a tizzy over this week’s Sports Illustrated cover which features Lindsey Vonn, an Olympic skier, in a position that could only be described as “totally pervy.”  Ms. Vonn is shown careening down a fake mountain with her backside raised so high in the air you’d think she was readying herself for a colonoscopy.  Supposedly, this is a normal position in skiing, although even the most erotically brain-dead reader would have to admit the girl looks like she’s about to take it where the sun don’t shine.  

One does get annoyed at how often exceptional women in sports, entertainment and even politics, eventually have to be tarted up to appeal to the general public.  Lady singers with powerhouse voices go from being song birds to strippers – Mariah, Aguilera, whatsername Furtado – while many women who’ve trained their whole lives to bring home the gold eventually land in Maxim in their bikinis.  

True, the weight of a woman’s personal power disintegrates once she’s been reduced to a masturbatory tool.  True, dips like Sarah Palin and the current crop of equally dippy Hollywood starlets offend by securing spots on the cultural landscape simply because of their over-the-top hotness.  The culture seems to believe no one will pay attention to anything females do unless their boobies are jiggling while they’re doing it, or in the case of women like Hillary Clinton, unless we can simultaneously talk about what poorly dressed hags they are. 

On the other hand, if there was anyone over whom we should be salivating for purely hormonal reasons, it’s athletes.  Athletes fascinate solely because of the way their bodies look, work and move.  They are Adonises and Athenas whose greatest contribution to our world is physical.  As spectators, we take part in the fantasy of our own bodies possessing such beauty and strength, and we get an erotic charge watching them as fans.  

Who’s ever solicited an opinion on politics or culture from a sports star?  The Iraq war starts or Barack Obama gets elected and the media asks every celebrity known to man, including dumbies like Paris Hilton, what they think about it.  When the economy collapsed, was anyone asking, “I wonder what Peyton Manning’s thoughts are on how bank solvency and damaged investor confidence may have impacted global stock markets.”

I mean, when I see an ad with David Beckham’s boner in a pair of Armani undies, it hardly degrades his accomplishments in my eyes.  In fact, it reinforces them.  Of course a man with enough physical prowess to hit a ball dead center into a net with his forehead has to be a sexual dynamo as well.  We already think of our athletes as empty-headed studs and studlets and pay them handsomely for it.  Why not go all the way?  Why not show an ad with, say, Reggie Bush half naked or Tom Brady with his fingers in the shape of a triangle over his mouth and his tongue poking through?   

Lindsey Vonn is pretty.  Seeing her on Sports Illustrated in a normal, though slightly exaggerated skiing position while being named “America’s Best Woman Skier Ever,” is not as offensive as seeing her on the cover of Maxim in a thong “showing us the money.” 

Here’s what I propose.  Let’s keep the sexual objectification of athletes and get rid of the objectification we foist onto everyone else.  Let singers sing, actors act and politicians proposition cops in bathrooms.  Let’s leave it to athletes to do what they do best: maintain rock hard bods and score.

“She’s pretty,” he said.  “We have similar backgrounds, our working lives are compatible.”  With a casual shrug of his shoulders, he concluded, “she fits.”  

Kevin said nothing about love, intimacy or how his loins stirred when his gal walked into the room.  He only said she fits.  

Before Ms. Fits, Kevin dated an iron-willed wild child who he fought and made up with in deliciously seductive turns.  Kevin’s mild-mannered persona often balked at the sparks of behavior thrown off by this lovely ball of fire.  And unlike Ms. Fits’ quieter life as a caterer, Wild Child’s skyrocketing success as a playwright gave Kevin’s competitive streak a run for its money.  The boy was hooked.  I never quite understood what had happened to make him quit the longest, most invigorating relationship he seemed ever to have had.  All he told me was how it “stopped working,” and how, at present, this new gal “fit.”  

So, of course, I obsessed for the next few hours about “fitting.”  Would I “fit” into my new love’s world?  What piece of my life – job, upbringing, socio-economic status – would I have trouble “fitting” into the grand puzzle of his? 

It’s as if our romantic lives are now run using corporate strategy, like they’re deals being brokered in some company’s Mergers and Acquisitions department.  According to Wikipedia (yeah, I had to look it up), Mergers and Acquisitions is all about the “buying, selling and combining of different companies that can aid, finance, or help a growing company in a given industry grow rapidly without having to create another business entity.”  

Perhaps it’s absurd of me to be using business or math analogies since I still count on my fingers and can barely tell time, but the point is clear:  you’re either an acquirer or a merger.  Either you’re looking for someone who can install themselves into your world without much adjustment on your part, or someone who can push out the edges of your world and make it big enough to fit two gigantic lives into one.   

Kevin’s an acquirer.  He and his gal have checklists of needs that apparently can be met by both parties.  In Ms. Fits, he has acquired a life partner.  Which I guess makes me a merger.  I’ve got my own life story but am jazzed by the possibility of being woven into another person’s story so a whole new tale can unfold.  Acquirers don’t want the hassle of creating a new entity.  But mergers want to discover the new galaxy that will take shape after the big bang blast of two souls colliding.  They have the urge to, uh, merge.   

Surely, if you want to build something with another person, the puzzle pieces of your lives need to fit in some way.  But in the long run, do you stay together because the new entity is made up of the right parts, or because you’re so mad about each other, you make it work?  

Like most folks, I look for evidence to support my own beliefs.  Therefore, when Kevin suggested we go back to his pad for a more intimate reunion, I considered it proof that acquisition is the least effective dating strategy.  If his gal was such a great match, what gaps was he trying to fill by reaching back into history with me?  I politely declined the offer then found out from a mutual friend six months later that Kevin had not only married Ms. Fits, but she was seven months pregnant.  

The first conclusion to draw is that Kevin is an a-hole.  Maybe Ms. Fits was an ideal mate for Kevin because she could nestle nicely into the landscape of his life.  Or maybe fate, and his overeager seed, forced him to make her fit.   

But the second, more important conclusion is that a person has to do more than complement your life to make love last.  A relationship should be so emotionally snug that you feel comfortable, lusty…and able to keep it in your pants.

Kathryn Bigelow rocks.  

If you don’t know who she is, I dare you to watch The Hurt Locker and walk out of the movie theater without having your mind blown.  Hollywood’s got Nora Ephron and Nancy Meyers leading a tiny pack of female film directors, but these dames only churn out girly schlock about parenting, shopping and going gaga for guys.  Kathryn Bigelow is a different animal.  Some of the director’s most famous films were 1987’s Near Dark, a creepily dark gore fest about vampires, and Point Break, an adrenaline rush about bank-robbing surfers that became a cult classic despite the Keanu Reeves cheese factor.  

But Bigelow’s masterpiece is last year’s The Hurt Locker, a gritty, ass-on-the-edge-of-your-seat film about the Iraq War which the New York Times promises will leave you “shaken, exhilarated and drained, but…also thinking.”  As a filmmaker, Kathryn Bigelow is hardcore and virile.   

And yeah.  She’s a chick.  

I get jazzed when female entertainers compete on the same turf as the big boys, only because I loathe any presumption about what art is and who should be making it; in particular, the suggestion that females can only make art for other women.  Supposedly, lady art doesn’t touch on universal themes or is considered light fare when compared to the hunkier expressions of men.  Books by women are Chick or Mommy Lit, while their movies are Chick Flicks and Rom Coms.  In 2007, Vanity Fair god Christopher Hitchens claimed women aren’t even as funny as men. 

Admittedly, there aren’t many women working in or consuming mainstream culture who are disproving these theories.  I don’t want to believe most gals would rather write or read The Dating Detox than The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, or create or watch The Proposal instead of, well, The Hurt Locker.  I wonder if women really are into fluff or whether we’re conditioned to be.  Are women who break the mold, like Kathryn Bigelow and, say, Tina Fey, really anomalies, or are they the only females who’ve had the luck to squeeze through the cultural gate?  There must be gobs of talented writers, filmmakers and craftswomen who would make multi-dimensional art if they could just find their way into the mainstream…er, right?  

It all came home during last Sunday’s Golden Globes where I found myself comparing Bigelow’s flick to the Best Picture competition.  Indeed, Avatar was a gorgeous adventure, Up in the Air touching, and Inglourious Basterds, a riotous good time. 

But really, these movies were just manifestations of their directors’ lost boyhood fantasies – Cameron’s fairy tale fascination with alien-inhabited planets, Reitman’s sweetly moralistic conclusion that love is all you need, Tarantino’s adolescent bloodlust.  Only the blistering Precious managed to do what The Hurt Locker did: tell a good story about an authentic human being whose journey into the depths of his or her own psyche illuminated some greater truth about our time.  

Kathryn Bigelow directed the manliest, most adult film of 2009, about the manliest of subjects; war.  No pretty blue people, no handsome, repentant studs, no zany Nazis.  Just sweaty men, dirt and bombs.  Bigelow offered high-impact action and ideas, she got us high as our nerves popped then left us with a rewarding emotional finish.  And unlike Avatar’s director James Cameron, who I expected to come out from behind the scenery to say, “in case you didn’t get it, war is bad,” or, “hey, that last scene was about how we should care more for the environment,” Bigelow made her point without slamming us over the head.  As the San Francisco Chronicle said, “she makes guy movies – and she makes them better than guys do.”

Of course, there’s no harm in silly, Chick-infested fun, just like dudes can toss softballs like The Hangover into the culture and still be considered an artistically versatile gender.  The problem with bubble-headed girl crap is there isn’t much else for us. 

Although who am I to talk, when I’ve written a novel that, upon publication, will undoubtedly land smack dab in the middle of Chick Lit-ville.  I love my book, my baby makes me proud.  But I do hope to continue to evolve as an artist in order to lift myself and my lady friends out of the pigeonholes we fit ourselves into.  Thankfully, women like Kathryn Bigelow make playing in the big leagues seem within reach.  

As of now, I’m practicing my swing.

Every time I log into my checking account, I’m asked a “security question,” the answer to which only I’m supposed to know, so the bank can confirm my identity.  Thus far, the only question the bank has asked me upon logging in is the name of my first boyfriend.  And what a joy it is to be forced to recall that relationship on a regular basis.  

When I was setting up the account, I had to select three possible security questions from a handful of rotten choices.  The only questions I could answer with any certainty were my mother’s birthplace and the name of Bozo my first boyfriend.  But choosing the third question threw me for a loop.  The street I grew up on?  Geez, I moved around so much, I barely remember what my high school was called.  The name of my favorite pet?  Well, there was Mitten, my first cat, but we had to give her away.  Then there was my Grandma’s dog, Maggie, but she got hit by a car.  My best friend in grammar school?  Which grammar school?  I had a best friend in each one.  I could say Molly Bartasevich, she was a decent chick.  But am I going to remember ol’ Moll every time I log in?  

Still, the worst question has to be about my first boyfriend, a self-loathing man/boy who cheated and made fun of everything I did.  Now, every time I log into my account I have to think about this hideous example of masculine turd-headedness and what a dip I was for digging him.  

Could there be worse memories to unearth from the past?  How ‘bout, “what was the name of the kid in grade school who used to make fun of you for buying your clothes at KMart” or, “what was more embarrassing; having food in your braces throughout the entire fifth grade or tripping over your shoelaces in front of your quarterback crush in high school?” 

Based on the answers to my security questions, I’ve deduced the following: I may have a fear of intimacy due to a history of rootlessness, mean kids on the playground and pet trauma, culminating in a damaging first love relationship with a complete heel.  

Thanks, Bank of America! 

If we must remember personal information about ourselves with such frequency, how about more forward thinking, more enjoyable security questions?  Here are my suggestions: 

“What is the most interesting city you’ve ever visited?”  

“What do you love most about puppies?” 

“If you had five minutes in an elevator with George Clooney, what would you do to him first?” 

“How much money do you wish was in this bank account after you get through these lameass security questions?” 

Personally, I’m glad to have discovered this banking treasure.  My financial institution is really helping me out in the most challenging areas of my life.  Their exorbitant fees keep my piddly budget in check, the crickets I hear chirping whenever I’m on hold with customer service teaches me patience, and now their covert love counsel is getting my romantic life back on track. 

Who needs self-help when you’ve got a bank?

Winter cramps my style.  All I want is to cover every inch of flesh to avoid the elements, which completely trumps being fashionable.  I see women in stylish canary yellow coats, in sexy stockings, in cutie-pie knit caps topped with tufts of yarn or those funky Russian jobs old guys wear to go hunting.  Despite the icy tundra surrounding us, these gals look like a million bucks.  

Meanwhile, I’m dressed in four layers of clothes beneath a down coat hanging to my knees.  I’m in a bulbous hat covering my entire head, a chunky scarf and boots heavy enough to pass military inspection.  Because of my shortness and round features, the look is far from flattering.  I could only describe my winter style as “igloo-esque.”  

The winter is my cocoon period, a season of reinvention in which I discover new ways to put myself into the world once I become a butterfly in spring.  Clothes may be the most superficial aspect of this rebirth, but certainly they’re the most fun.  Usually, I only get rid of old stuff from the closet or choose new words to describe my style.  Last year, I was going to be “funky,” the year before a bit more “boho.”  But 2010 feels different.  More transformative.  My next incarnation?  

I’m going to be an Italian woman.   

I was watching this foreign film about an Italian guy trying to extract himself from a relationship with one woman while sleeping with another.  The first time we meet the passionate Cloe, woman numero uno in the film, she’s sunbathing topless.  When her bully of a boyfriend comes round to demand she get ready for dinner, she yells something impassioned and Italian at him, like, “I cannot live like this, you are nothing but a worm!  I have no use for you.  This isn’t love, it’s brutalization!”  Cloe slips on a wrinkled, sheer blouse and ties her hair in a loose knot yet still manages to look absolutely stunning.  Then she and her man go to a restaurant where she continues to don the see-through top, proudly displaying her breasts to any other patron who dares to look in her direction.   

I’m totally gonna start doing that.    

Really, I’d been working Italy into my wardrobe for years, but lots of items have remained hidden in my closet since I’ve been back in the States.  In fact, much of the vivacious, voluptuous, hot-blooded textures Europe gave to my character have been subdued in an attempt to re-acclimate.  Undoubtedly, it would be kind of odd to go to the movies in a busty, Sophia Loren-type getup or disagree with a colleague at work by telling him, “Your cruelty seeps into me like poison.  You are a fool and you are dead to me.”   

Anyway, it’s more than getting bored with my wardrobe.  It’s about wanting to free a caged part of my soul.   

Part of my reason for coming back to the States was realizing I couldn’t spend a lifetime drinking sangria and writing stories in cafés with manic poets and directionless bums.  But why does the alternative have to be so humdrum?  One doesn’t have to be a wanderluster who moves half way across the globe to know the way we’ve constructed our worlds kinda stinks.  The passion is gone from our day to day.  The vast palette of color that enriches our lives has been drained by a fixation on success, or nowadays, survival.   

I want it back.  Maybe I don’t have to channel Italian women, move to the other side of the planet or even alter the life I’ve built for myself in the here and now.  Maybe I simply need to be adamant in not allowing my own passion to drain.  Let the thigh high stockings beneath my business suit be a silent rebellion.  Let the sound of my laughter reach socially unacceptable levels as a more explicit revolt.  Maybe next time someone bullies me, I’ll skip the Oprah-style courtesy and let him know he’s a worm who’s destroying my life.  I’ll take flamenco classes and mimic the languages I hear in foreign films and write stories raw enough to unsettle more emotionally detached sensibilities.  And I’ll keep falling madly, dangerously in love.  That is, once I get out of this dag-blasted parka.

 Man, I can’t wait for spring.