Master of the Universe

Dear Mr. Wiener,

Sorry I'm late to your pity party. I've been slogging through the fourth draft of my hour long speech for the National Speakers Association. I'm still an academy member, not officially a full fledged member, until I give 20 paid speeches. You probably have hundreds of paid speeches in the bag. I just gave my first - sort of - since I didn't have the speech memorized but I did give a semblance of a speech on my topic: Retirement Is Not An Option: Act 3. It sounds like a speech you might want to hear right about now. Or you can joined me Monday nights at the West Hollywood chapter of Toastmasters. I got first place on Monday night for giving an impromptu speech on, "What are the two most important characteristics of a true champion?" You might have learned something. I reflected that the two important traits of a champion were having an attitude of gratitude and recognizing vulnerability as an asset instead of a liability. That moment felt about as good as getting the academy award for best actress in a documentary. You might have used one or two of my points in your resignation speech on Thursday. It didn't sound like you had a lot of gratitude going for you.

It feels almost like a sin not to blog about you, Anthony. May I call you Anthony, Mr. Wiener? I know I'm a week late on this subject, but forgive me because I've been busy.

Anthony, your antics give us women so much fodder for the subject of men behaving badly that it's seems a shame to waste a good journalistic moment. At fist I didn't care about what you did; that is to say, share your private part with random women. I really couldn't figure out why I didn't care and it bothered me - not about what you did but why I didn't care about what you did. Should I really care that a guy was objectifying women for his own self-agrandizement? Seen that done a hundred times before. Nothing new there. Hey, look at my penis! Isn't it great? Don't you just adore it? Of course, you love it! It's a penis! All women love penis, don't you know. (I refuse to use the plural of penis. My significant other and I always argued over the plural of the word. I called it peni.)

First, not all women love penis. Why in the name of Zeus do men think we all love penis? That's an assumption that I can prove just walking down Hollywood Blvd. And if we did love, okay, dick, why do you think we want to see it on Twitter or a cell phone. That picture is just bad photography. No, dude. You love your penis and I don't love your penis. You love it most of all. All men love their dick most of all.

Anthony, when I first heard about your penchant to get the attention of random women by exposing yourself, I knew you had a psychological problem. So it was easy to distance myself from what you did. I mean, who does that besides 25 year olds who don't know any better or someone with a sexual issue or even with a random self-esteem issue. I mean talk about your adolescent behavior. I mean, talk about your narcissism, your borderline personality, your hypo-manic attention getting neediness. And your behavior had been going on long before you married, Anthony. I mean, didn't you think you had a problem. You've been displaying this behavior for 4 years prior to your marriage. Oh, excuse me, you didn't think at all because you love the thrill of the hunt; you love the risk, you risk-taker, you. You felt like you were master of the universe. Or, maybe as some people are saying, you wanted to get caught. In front of TV cameras? In front of the world? Big balls you have, Tony.

I know that most everyone was more angry at you for lying than your actual behavior. Some were more angry at you for your rank stupidity. And I kind of get it why you lied - embarrassment, of course, lost of status, of course, your wife would find out, of course - but even as you told the lie you had to know that one or more of those tattle-tale girls would want their five minutes of fame. Girls just can't keep their mouth shuts now-a-days. They love to kiss and tell or in your case, just plain tell. By the way, the dialogue between you and some of the girls was pretty sophomoric, Anthony. Do you really talk like that in bed? Time for a script doctor. So lying had no upside for you except more haters came out. And being stupid in action and deed was really beneath you because you had a rep for being articulate and bright on political issues. You really do seem to think with your dick. How cliched! That's basically why you seek therapy. Then maybe you'll get enlightened and write a book about the "penis factor." I have no idea how you are going to redeem yourself. I have no idea how you get your marriage back on track. This whole episode is pretty tragic because a fall from grace is never good. In a sick way, it would have been better just to have a commercial exchange like Spitzer. Payment for services rendered. It's cleaner even though his trick was a blabber mouth, too. I think that's an ethics violation on the behalf of his favorite call-girl. We all understand commerce even though we don't condone cheating. Morality is a sticky issue under any circumstances. You, my friend, didn't even get laid. There was no commerce; there was only behavior unbefitting an adult. No perks there.

Maybe I still don't care, Tony, that you let yourself and your wife and Congress, I mean the Democrats down. Maybe I don't care because by now I'm conditioned to expect the worst in men's behavior. It doesn't phase me. I don't even feel sad about it. I don't feel anything about it except you are a Democrat; even so it seems your job wasn't even that important to you and you let down your constituents . And the women who participated in your charade, those who hung on to your twittering longer than one second, not only played a role in your downfall, but also behaved like twittering females. The minute one of those women kept the sex game going , so dying to hold on to the pathetic five minutes of attention you gave them with your immature behavior, they also became complicit. Hey, Tony, is it my imagination or are more common today to see women behaving badly as well.

Look, Anthony, I'm not a prude in matters of sex. I like it as much as the next straight female. But I prefer intimacy in matters of sex, principally in the prone position, and I don't approve of public displays in which all of us get caught up in someone else's distorted vision (i.e., your wet dream) of what appropriate sexual conduct is about. Do you realize that there are now little imitators of Anthony Wiener's bad behavior floating around iCloud? Now more men than ever will think it's okay to show their penis because you did, and these guy also won't think they'll get caught. Darling, Tony, everyone gets caught in some fashion. Everyone pays the price. Why, oh, why, darling Tony, did you think that somewhere in your redundant mind, you thought that if men behaved in a risky manner, women would be turned on. We don't get horny that way, dude.

Here's a history lesson for you, Tony: In days gone by, man's conquest over his sex drive gave him superior powers and many virtues. It was a sign of honor not to flagrantly display the male member all the time because keeping the penis in check was a way to demonstrate a strong mind/body connection. That was true self-mastery. Today, it's just reality TV and we are all sucked into the vortex of other's people's perception of their reality.

Namaste

Joan

Down and Dirty

Hi, Boomers,

I had a busy week and no time to blog. It made me cranky because from time to time I have things to blog about and can't find the time to do so.

However, I find myself in Denver, CO, at this moment at a tango festival with some free time, lying in bed with my sore right foot propped up on a pillow. I come to Denver twice a year (Memorial Day and Labor Day) to dance tango like a maniac and to visit with old friends who are dear to me. One of the most interesting aspects of these festivals (I go to Portland , Oregon, also twice a year) is the opportunity to talk to my favorite people and get down an dirty with what's on our minds. It is curious to me, however, that all my friends are male in the tango community, except for my one long-time female friend who sells her tango clothes collection. In Los Angeles, I have three close female friends and one very best male friend and I feel lucky to have them for support and love. As I get older, I am more particular about who my friends are in my life.

Inevitably, conversations run to male/female relationships. It doesn't matter if the man is 63 or 46, emotional adolescent outpourings, yearnings, longings, hopes, lost and found loves pour out of us like a faucet without a turn off value. This seems to be the human condition: the search for fulling relationships. My friend, Philip, can attest to this because his psychology practice is all about finding happiness in mid-life relationships. Sometimes I think it's rotten luck that people have to endlessly search and sometimes flounder to find love. It's hit and miss. It's sad and happy. It's right and it's wrong. We can't get there from here. Where is the love? as the song lyrics ask.

I heard an outrageous story from my 63 year old friend who fell for a woman in the baby boomer category. From the moment he met her a year ago, he knew he shouldn't get involved with her. The bells and whistles were out there for the viewing and the signs indicated that this was not going to be the nurturing, supportive relationship he was seeking. But he fell for her anyway and it was a hard fall because he put in a huge amount of time and effort. And all the while, something in the back of his mind knew intuitively the chase was wrong. In this case, the object of my friend's affection wasn't well-educated; she had been divorced a long time, had no children, was not responsive to his professional or artistic pursuits. In short, she was a woman who was into trying out men but not necessarily wanting to commit to long and loving relationship. So what did this woman want from my friend?

This woman was after was the perfect penis! No kidding! It turns out after four months of dating, she told my friend that his penis shape wasn't quite right for her. She was looking for something a little different, something a little thinner, something a little shorter, something that would give her an orgasm because it seemed that she had had only two orgasms in her life and she was on the search to find that perfect penis again. She told him she wasn't in to my friend in a sexual way. On the next penis!

My mouth is still open in wonderment about this story because (a) I know his penis (he is a former lover and a man who is a lost to me in love due to our inability to sustain a long distance relationship), and (b) a man of 63 who is still active sexually is a real find. In boomer speak, hang on to the sexually active and sexually interested.

This situation hits me in the face with everything that is wrong about looking for love in all the wrong places. Of course, I did it, too. Not with a penis, mind you, but with wanting a loving commitment from a man that was never going to happen even if I spent four years trying to make him my partner in life.

We're in our 60's, for God sake, and our intention is to find a relationship that not only possess an intimate component (and hey, girls, a penis is a penis is a penis and if it works it's an even better penis), but the couple has a spiritual connection that inherently contains caring, support, fun, way loads of fun. I don't want to drag around a sad-sack for the rest of my life. I need energy to match mine and we both have to be going in the same direction. At the age of 60 or more, we should know the nuances of what makes a good relationship. On the other hand, this relationship business can be a mystery of huge porportions.

You wouldn't think at a tango festival that you could learn so much about men. But I've learned a lot about the state of the male mind as it relates to females. My 46 year old friend and I were discussing how to spot a "crazy" woman quickly and then how he astutely avoids these kinds of women. My friend is so very intelligent and sane and knows exactly what he wants in a female. He is very conscious about certain psycho signs in a female as she approaches him to dance or to talk. He's got his male relationship check-list in his head and he quickly makes an assessment about the woman who is coming on to him. It probably takes him about thirty minutes to gather information from her to see if she is a prospective date. This guy saves an awful lot of time in his life. He doesn't get too attached at the beginning. And for sure, he isn't thinking with his dick.

More from Denver later. I'm going to dance this afternoon.

Namaste

Joan