mtaylor@observer.com

Twitter: @mbrookstaylor

Me neither, but John McCain's campaign just sent out the senator's picks for one of the regional finals. And, like a true ex-maverick, McCain predicts that the big regional game will be decided between number 1 and number 2-ranked teams Kansas and UCLA [bracket noted].

-- Azi Paybarah

DR. SELMAN: What did you guys do for Thanksgiving?

HILLY: I went to my friend Alex’s parents’ house in Connecticut.

GEORGE: I went to Kansas City. And yesterday morning, my dad was about to drive me to the airport, and he was in the kitchen and spotted something out the window. He lives on top of a hill in the middle of a ranch, and there were three turkeys in a field, and he grabbed his shotgun. We hopped in his car and went down, and he shot one turkey out the window—not easy—and then got out and shot another turkey in the head. Then he was wringing the thing’s neck, twirling it around, and threw it in the back of the car, and it started flapping around, and I started freaking out, jumped out and ran home in the rain. I don’t know if I’m cut out for that kind of thing—providing for my family.

DR. SELMAN: So, Hilly, you missed out on all that fun?

HILLY: Ha ha.

GEORGE: When I came back last night, how would you describe my mood?

HILLY: Really sad and kind of scared.

GEORGE: I was excited coming back and seeing Hilly, but after being there—it was a perfect week, I think I only got depressed twice. Once while watching Short Cuts, because I feared I was like those characters, these horrible people—

DR. SELMAN: You could be like your dad.

GEORGE: That’s the thing, I can’t be like him. I’m in awe of him—he’s got kids and grandkids and a great marriage and writes his newspaper column. Going back to the hunting: Hilly and I were in Blockbuster and—

HILLY: There was this scuffle. A customer, a 6-foot-7 Asian guy, apprehended a shoplifter. The guy said, “I saw you stuff those DVD’s into your bag”—and the guy was pretty disheveled and dirty; didn’t look exactly like he was homeless, but pretty close—and he started denying it. So the Asian guy grabbed him, and it turned into a real fight, and George ran out.

GEORGE: Hilly was in line, and I was closer to the action—like I could be caught in the crossfire if the guy had a gun. You know how I always say, “If the shit goes down, I’m going to be ready”?

DR. SELMAN: I remember you have fantasies about saving people—

GEORGE: Doing something heroic. I could’ve joined the fight. The uncool thing is, I didn’t think of protecting Hilly. I was like, “I’m getting out of here.” Plus I’d made her wait in line to pay for the videos.

DR. SELMAN: What do you think, Hilly?

HILLY: It wasn’t that big a deal. The people who work at Blockbuster are practically criminals themselves, because they’re so stupid and apathetic and rude.

DR. SELMAN: So why do you feel inadequate in that situation?

GEORGE: I’ve always prided myself on—I’ve been in that kind of situation and confronted the force of evil. Two weeks ago, a friend got tickets to see Robert Pollard; before I got there, I had beer, sake, and then at the show I had beer, vodka, vodka, vodka, vodka, vodka, vodka, and we were at the Bowery Ballroom, and someone on the upper level poured liquid on my head. I thought it was an accident. But then it happened a second time, and I had my vodka soda, and I hurled it up at these two hipsters and completely doused them—it was beautiful. And then I gave the two middle fingers and a really mean look. And this girl congratulated me. Then I got another vodka soda and a big cup of water and went back and looked up at those guys and pointed to the water and pointed to them—in other words: This is coming next. So I really took care of that situation.

DR. SELMAN: So you need drinks in order to—

GEORGE: Yes, courage. And then I had a sip of my friend’s tequila, and the place started spinning and I fell over into a woman. Went home, threw up and passed out on the couch …. But at Blockbuster, it had the appearance that I wasn’t protecting Hilly, I was saving my own skin; it was like I was pulling a Jackie O.—

HILLY: No—don’t belittle her. Anyway, with the exception of sometimes when you’ve pushed me into moving traffic, for the most part you protect me.

DR. SELMAN: Why weren’t you together for Thanksgiving?

GEORGE: Had to do with money. So back to Kansas City: I stayed with my grandmother and we had a great time, driving around looking at various houses she lived in and—

DR. SELMAN: Was there ever any consideration that you would spend Thanksgiving together?

GEORGE: We postponed it—a ticket for Hilly would have cost like $700.

HILLY: It sucked, but Christmas is right after Thanksgiving, and to me it’s extremely important that, for my parents’ sake, he comes for Christmas.

GEORGE: We might have needed—did we kind of agree that it was O.K. for us to have a few days apart? This is not relevant to our relationship, but I did have the feeling that I got a weeklong furlough in Kansas City—

DR. SELMAN: A weeklong furlough?

GEORGE: Like I’m back in jail, meaning Manhattan Island. Now, I guess the big issue—and it really wasn’t a big issue for me; I didn’t know how to react, I was mildly stunned at first, I don’t know how to react to this—

HILLY: I don’t think it’s brutalizing turkeys; I think it’s more a romantic way of looking at life. Your father’s lifestyle is—

GEORGE: That, actually, was not the issue I was referring to just now. What’s the other thing that happened?

[Silence.]

GEORGE: See, it’s a non-issue. Amazing. You’re going to have a field day with this one! Hilly stopped taking birth control and didn’t tell me for six weeks.

[Silence.]

DR. SELMAN: No wonder she stayed out of Kansas.

GEORGE: What do you mean? Let me say that again: Hilly stopped taking her birth-control pills and didn’t tell me for six weeks. Reaction?

DR. SELMAN: People in Kansas are friendly until you go to the abortion clinic.

GEORGE: If you really want to—

HILLY: I have no desire to be pregnant right now, and I was not concerned greatly about it being an issue. I had to stop taking it because I had to schedule an appointment with my doctor; she doesn’t believe in prescribing birth control more than four months at a time. And I had to reschedule it because of work, and then one week led to another—

GEORGE: O.K., I’m going to play the role of Dr. Selman now: Hilly, that’s immaterial. The main issue is: Why didn’t you tell George? Right?

HILLY: Because I knew you would have flipped out!

GEORGE [as DR. SELMAN again]: I understand that, Hilly, but don’t you think George would have freaked out more had you gotten pregnant?

HILLY: Well, I’m sick of dealing with George freaking out about every little thing.

GEORGE: I do freak about little things. One example is, every time I come back to the apartment, it’s been rearranged. Furniture has been moved, pictures have been—

DR. SELMAN: Are you guys actually having sex? Because if not, then it doesn’t really matter.

GEORGE: We’ve had sex twice since our last session [three weeks prior]—one time on Queen Noor’s bed at the Ritz. Used a condom. Hilly had the, whatever, presidential suite, for two nights; Queen Noor wasn’t there, but she stayed there once.

DR. SELMAN: Do you usually use a condom?

GEORGE: No, I paint a map of China on her belly.

DR. SELMAN: So why use a condom this time?

GEORGE: Because I thought, “Well, now I need to use birth control. She went off birth control.”

HILLY: He wanted me to buy condoms for him!

DR. SELMAN: I think the thrust here is that George is saying that you didn’t inform him that you were not on birth control, and he was under the assumption that you were.

HILLY: Well, whatever—there are a lot of things George does that he doesn’t inform me about.

DR. SELMAN: But the issue being that if you had sex, then you could conceivably get pregnant.

HILLY: Not if he’s drawing his little cartoons everywhere!

DR. SELMAN: You could still get pregnant that way.

HILLY: Well—

GEORGE: You can. But it’s—listen, I don’t want to dwell on that so much. We didn’t use a condom last night.

DR. SELMAN: What’s the issue then with the birth control?

GEORGE: Well, she’s going to get back on it. Right?

DR. SELMAN: So you’re not on it yet?

HILLY: I started this morning.

DR. SELMAN: What would you have done had you gotten pregnant?

HILLY: I don’t know. I guess I would have had an abortion or discussed it with George, but—

GEORGE: Well, if that had happened, that would have been a terrible—

HILLY: I don’t condone abortion—I never would imagine having one. And immediately it wouldn’t be my first idea. But considering that during that time I was also drinking and smoking cigarettes, it certainly couldn’t have been good for the health of the fetus. If I get pregnant, I want to do it intelligently and become completely healthy. I am pretty firmly against abortion unless it’s an extreme situation.

GEORGE: I’m against it.

DR. SELMAN: Would this have been an extreme situation?

HILLY: No. Aside from—I really did not, I really was not concerned that it was going to happen—

DR. SELMAN: So what’s your concern, George? It sounds like she had the situation well in hand.

GEORGE: I didn’t want to risk her getting pregnant. I can’t even fathom that. I don’t think I’m capable of that kind of responsibility right now. It’s funny, though—when I was in Kansas, I was driving around listening to “Alice’s Restaurant” on NPR, and I thought, “Wow, if I had a mini-Hilly here next to me, I could explain this song to her, and wouldn’t that be nice, and—”

DR. SELMAN: So, in other words, if she had gotten pregnant, you would have been fine?

GEORGE: If she had gotten pregnant—see, I can’t even go there. I can’t imagine—

HILLY: Maybe there’s some subconscious thing going on in my brain that made me intentionally stop taking it, because there’s resentment I harbor that it’s yet another responsibility I have to take on. I made it clear when we started dating that I didn’t really even believe in birth control. I went to three doctors and asked about options, but you made it clear to me that you thought it would be best to be on the pill. My doctor agreed and I knew that I loved you, and so I thought, “Well, let me try this.” I tried it, I got really sick, I had to try different kinds, blah blah—and you know, has it ever come up in conversation? I don’t think so.

GEORGE: I apologize for not being supportive and communicative about those feminine issues—

HILLY: It’s not just a feminine issue. It’s that you don’t have to wear a condom—whoo-hoo!

GEORGE: I understand. I’m apologizing. You have to do this, and I just take it for granted. However, I think there’s another factor that supersedes all of this—that you could have gotten pregnant. [To DR. SELMAN] Don’t you think she should communicate to me whether or not she’s on birth control?

DR. SELMAN [to HILLY]: First of all, I congratulate you—I think what you just said was fabulous. Ha, ha! And really cuts to the heart of a lot of things.

GEORGE: What?!

DR. SELMAN: She said she unconsciously went off birth control because of these other reasons—that this is what she has come to think of.

GEORGE: Oh-kay. And you’re congratulating her?

DR. SELMAN: I think she’s being very open and honest. It makes perfect sense to me.

GEORGE: Well, people can be honest about a lot of things, but that doesn’t mean—

DR. SELMAN: And it’s also insightful.

GEORGE: Yes. But someone could argue that it’s also—irresponsible? Or destructive? Or … crazy? I’m not doing that. I’m saying someone else could.

DR. SELMAN: This is a fundamental issue in your relationship that’s not really been—

GEORGE: She’s saying, “I got off birth control unconsciously because I resented your behavior.” I mean, that’s worse behavior.

DR. SELMAN: Well, it’s all her responsibility.

GEORGE: O.K. … O.K.

DR. SELMAN: Then if it’s all her responsibility, then if you just follow the logic that it’s her body and she can do what she wants with it—

GEORGE: Shouldn’t you be saying, “O.K., but Hilly, it might have helped if you had raised this topic before, either here or with George”?

HILLY: Well, it’s hard to talk about something, especially if it’s so serious, when most of the time I get yelled at because I’m not talking enough, and then when I do start talking, you say: “You’re driving me crazy! I’m trying to read!” I don’t mean to deflect from the issue at hand, but you brought up the whole topic of Christmas—which I know you hate, you hate Christmas, you don’t want to go see my parents, whatever—

GEORGE: What? I do, we’re going. We’re going to drive there.

HILLY: I started talking about Christmas, and you said, “I don’t want to talk about this now.” So maybe I find it difficult to talk with you about certain things.

GEORGE: I just think getting pregnant might be a slight overreaction … I mean, an extreme thing to do to—I don’t know—express your resentment. But anyway, our fifth anniversary is coming up. What do you want to do?

HILLY: Have ….

GEORGE: What?

HILLY: Nothing.

GEORGE: What?

HILLY: Nothing! I think—that I’d rather talk about something else.

[Silence.]

GEORGE: How does that common-law stuff work? If you live with someone for how many years, when do the common-law rules start kicking in? Just wondering.

DR. SELMAN: I think you have a ways to go before that. So if it was so great in Kansas, why did you ever leave?

GEORGE: It’s complicated. Yeah, I love New York.

DR. SELMAN: You long to go back to Kansas, but there’s really nothing there for you, is there?

GEORGE: It’s just—New York is tough. Mary-Kate Olsen smiled at me the other night at Bungalow 8. Think she was looking at me. She might have been looking over my shoulder. Anyway, that put a bounce in my step. O.K., Hilly? What else? I brought you back a T-shirt from Kansas City.

HILLY: You got me a T-shirt. Thank you very much.

[to be continued]

—George Gurley

Prior Articles:

George and Hilly published 09/18/06
George and Hilly published 08/14/06
George and Hilly published 09/11/06
George and Hilly published 08/14/06
George and Hilly published 08/07/06
George and Hilly published 07/31/06
George and Hilly published 07/24/06
George and Hilly published 07/17/06
George and Hilly published 06/26/06
George and Hilly published 06/19/06
George and Hilly published 05/29/06
George and Hilly published 05/15/06
George and Hilly published 05/08/06
George and Hilly published 05/01/06
George and Hilly published 04/17/06
George and Hilly published 04/03/06
George and Hilly published 03/20/06
George and Hilly published 02/6/06
George and Hilly published 01/23/06
George and Hilly published 01/16/06
George and Hilly published 12/26/05
George and Hilly published 11/14/05
George and Hilly published 11/07/05
George and Hilly published 10/24/05
George and Hilly published 10/17/05
George and Hilly published 10/10/05
George and Hilly published 10/03/05
George ’n’ Hilly, Back in Couples, Turn on the Doc published 09/26/05
But Should We Get Married? Part III published 08/29/05
But Should We Get Married? published 08/15/05
Should I Get Married? My Hilly Joining Me In Couples Session published 08/08/05

Hillary Clinton spent the second weekend of August in the Hamptons and left with a half-million bucks, $100 of which was mine.

Nobody from the press, no photographers, were invited to the various fund-raisers.

But duty called. First, I needed some appropriate shoes. At the Ralph Lauren store, I scored some $145 dressy white bucks. I called my therapist, Dr. Selman, for a pep talk. He happened to be in East Hampton, doing some shopping on Main Street. He said: “No drinking and driving!”

I smoked some “Vermont Green” marijuana and got behind the wheel of my grandmother’s baby-blue 1986 Mercedes and set off for Huntting Lane.

I realized I had no idea where Huntting Lane was.

I drove around Lily Pond asking for directions. An old man with a walking stick ignored me. Jerry Della Femina and wife passed me in a convertible. His face looked like a giant pink balloon. Boy, was I stoned.

There’s Egypt Lane and … there! … Huntting Lane. A line of cars on the grass.

I parked. The walk past the cops on the driveway brought on a mild attack of paranoia.

My body started moving left, toward the neighbor’s driveway, but righted itself, and immediately eyeballs were on me. I told the three young lady gatekeepers that I wasn’t on the list.

“No problem,” one of them chirped. All I had to do was fork over the suggested donation of $500.

“Umm.”

“But whatever you can give will work!”

“How about a hundred?”

“Oh. Kay. Can’t you maybe do 200?”

“Wellllll, not exactly. I’ve given money before, but—”

“No problem. I just need you to fill this out.”

I gave her my debit card and started filling the clipboarded paper thing out (for occupation I wrote “investor” and “N/A” for employer) and handed it back. Pretty sure it was the new shoes that got me in.

At the bar I met the handsome and tanned hosts, Randy Kempner and Tony Ingrao, two lovers who run an antique gallery on the Upper East Side. They were wearing tight pants. In the garden I met a nice aging gay couple, “Francis” and “Larry.” Been together three decades. They said they were Eisenhower Republicans who’d done business with Barbara Bush and voted for Bush 1 and 2.

Francis said he didn’t know how keen he was on Mrs. Clinton: “Ambivalent.”

All of a sudden, Senator Clinton was walking straight toward me!

She was trailed by two Secret Service guys talking to their wrists. She had an easygoing stride: queen of the rich soccer moms. Wearing sunglasses, diamond earrings, a turquoise Indian-like shirt, white pants, no socks and white Gucci-looking shoes.

Oh boy.

“Hello!” she said. “How are you?”

“Hi!” I replied, holding out my hand.

She eyeballed my nametag from behind her dark glasses.

“Hi, George. Nice to see you.”

My new friends told her a quick story about when they met in 1999.

“That’s so cute!” Mrs. Clinton said. “I love that. It’s so exciting for kids, too. I hear that all the time—some kid will say to me, ‘Do you remember me? I came to meet you at the airport,’ among this huge crowd of people. I say, ‘Wow, I’m so glad to see you again!’ So sweet.”

Francis joked about her running for President.

“Oh, well, gotta get through November first! Ha ha ha!” she replied.

I wanted to ask her if it’s O.K. to be celebrating five years without a terrorist act in this country, not to mention Bush and Blair’s foiling of the London bomb plot—but I went with “Are you gonna be able to relax this weekend at all?”

“This is like a little mini-vacation,” she said. “To be able to come here, even though I’m sort of working—it’s just so relaxing.”

I nodded. Mrs. Clinton turned to her two hosts.

“Now tell me, what’s the perspective here? This way?” she asked, and off she went.

The two Secret Service guys were still looking my way.

“They can probably hear everything we’re saying,” Francis said.

By now, a good 50 people had arrived.

A man whom I took to be a gay spy approached me at the bar.

“Hey, George. How are you? So how do you know the group here?”

“I actually don’t.”

“Are you from the area?”

“Kansas.”

“Oh, I’m from Colorado—we’re neighbors! Where in Kansas?”

“Lawrence.”

“Oh! Well, I practice medicine in Boulder.”

I managed to slip away. I found Francis and Larry, who were checking out the cute European-style pool with a water-spewing alligator. We raved about the steak tartare appetizers and cantaloupe gazpacho. Then we noticed five Chinese businessmen, three of whom were talking on cell phones. Francis chatted with one of them, who said they were with an “organization” and were there to show support.

I needed a breather, took a seat—then the gay spy appeared.

“Hello again,” said the gay spy. “You should get up and mingle.”

“Just taking a break.”

“Too much socializing? Where’s your mother’s house?”

Nearby, Ms. Clinton was schmoozing.

“Now tell me, how did you get into making chocolates,” she asked someone. A few minutes later, she was going on about how pleased she was to be “chatting, you know, out of uniform. I mean, how much more fun could it be?”

Soon it was speech time. Mr. Kemper introduced her.

Whoo! Yay! Clap clap.

“It really means a lot to me,” she said, “because I am running for re-election and—thank you—I feel so strongly about what’s happening in our country and around the world, and we are, in my view, heading in the wrong direction at an unfortunately rapid rate.”

She talked about the national deficit, the increase in the national debt, the country’s dependence on foreign oil, climate change, long-term weather projections, health-care problems.

She looked sturdy, like a tank.

“And on a beautiful summer afternoon in the Hamptons,” she said, “it may be something of a downer to say, ‘We’ve got to figure out how to fight and win against a new and very determined enemy that uses all of the advances in technology and the benefits of globalization—cell phones, the Internet, you name it, global-positioning devices and night-vision goggles you can buy at Radio Shack—and we have got to have the world united against this new enemy.’ And unfortunately, our current administration, our President and our Vice President, are more interested in drawing lines than drawing circles.”

Not a stammer. She finished up on a note about getting the country back on track.

“I saw some people coming late, and I saw some people with cameras,” she said. “So I would happy to stand here and take some pictures with those of you who haven’t had your picture taken yet.”

I got back into my car and drove to a party at yoga instructor Lienette Crafoord’s waterfront house in Sag Harbor. She looked good: a buxom redhead. She told me she stays away from politics.

“Because I have to have a flow of energy to teach yoga, my policy is to stay away from anything that’s going to change that, anything that’s controversial or might cause anxiety,” Ms. Crafoord said. “I take a little news off the Internet; I don’t really read newspapers or periodicals. I’m just very selective about what I take in, because I have to be able to put out. And I don’t want to be jaded in that effort to get people to heal their bodies.”

I spoke to a guest, one of her yoga students, Harry Hurt, the New York Times “Executive Pursuits” columnist.

“I think one of the things you should know about Hillary,” he said, “is that she supported the war in Iraq: She bends with the political wind. In that sense, she’s the yogi of American politics. She can twist herself up into a half-moon position, a tree position, awkward poses, eagle pose; she can be a camel, she can be a rabbit, she can be a tortoise, she can be an up dog, a down dog!

“Also, she’s got really, really thick legs and calves—and that just is not appealing,” Mr. Hurt added.

We went to hedge-fund manager John Paulson’s house on Tuckahoe Lane. It was his 50th birthday, and 200 or so friends, many European, were dressed in white and having cocktails before a dinner dance under a big white tent. In the living room, I sat down by movie producer Charles Evans with a beautiful blonde. In line for the bathroom, I met a gorgeous blond Italian woman in a white silk dress. She said she was Paola Bacchini-Rosenshein, a real-estate agent. “Personally, I think Hillary was a big disappointment to women, because she didn’t stand up for her rights,” she said. “She was humiliated publicly by her husband. I would not have tried to cover him up. So I lost faith in her. Totally. And I just think she’s doing all of this because she likes the power. I have given money to Hillary in the past, and I won’t do it again.”

It was close to midnight. Mr. Hurt and I made a pit stop at nightclub owner Noah Tepperberg’s spread in Water Mill, where I met two Russian sisters—models!—by the bonfire.

“I think she’s a strong woman,” said the younger one of Hillary. “It’s because she’s so much in love with her husband that she can forget and forgive.”

“I say Hillary Clinton, beautiful woman,” said the older sister. “Except she has fat legs.”

The sisters agreed to accompany us to the nightclub Boutique. At 2 a.m., Mr. Hurt leaned over to me and said, “What I’m thinking is, Hillary is rushing to be President, and you and I are just looking for Russian girls. And we found that. I’m not sure she’s going to be able to rush her way to the Presidency. As for us, I think it would be a mistake to be rushing a Russian girl. You gotta let every girl take her time, you know? We’re gonna take our time tonight, George, our good sweet time.”

—George Gurley

Actually, Mr. Rahman is supposed to have abandoned Allah for Jesus in Germany, where faith switching or faith abjuring has been no big deal since the days of Friedrich Nietzsche. The old übermensch-er has been dead for more than a century, but his baleful influence has spread so wide that some here in America lined up at museum doors to gawk and gape at Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, as the artist not so diplomatically entitled his arrangement of the Christian Lord and Savior tucked into a bottle of Mr. Serrano’s urine.

God, if there is one, only knows what would have happened to Mr. Serrano had he pulled that stunt in Afghanistan and put the Prophet in his little bottle. They would have been able to bag Mr. Serrano on multiple counts. You are not supposed to draw pictures of Muhammad, much less dunk him in a container of bodily fluids and then put him on exhibit. In America, when an artist does something like that, they take his grant away, but farther east the repercussions are more drastic.

Compared to Mr. Serrano, Mr. Rahman’s apostasy hardly counts. Nevertheless, one hates to think of what they would have done to Mr. Serrano, considering the way an Afghan posse tried to put Mr. Rahman in the past tense for the decidedly lesser crime of God jumping.

In our part of the world, God jumping is frequently looked on with approbation. It’s sometimes called “experimenting,” as in “The boy is trying to find himself.” One thing is sure: When the kid comes home in saffron sheets, bald as a basketball or a basketball player, and says he’s a Buddhist, the vigilantes over at the True Vine Fundamentalist Church confine themselves to verbally sending him to the nether regions.

In Kabul, if you’re born a Muslim, you stay one or else. It used to be like that in Kansas: If you were born a Methodist you did not dare to let some Baptist preacher lead you into the baptismal tank with nothing on but your undies. These days, it’s O.K. in Kansas for Methodists to turn themselves into Baptists or Lutherans, although turning Jew is not recommended. But turning anything in Kabul means kaboom!—the big kibosh. They won’t give it a rest; the fatwas start flying and a prudent God jumper heads for the ground (or, in Mr. Mr. Rahman’s case, Italy).

He escaped the gibbet and was let out of jail when it was decided that he couldn’t have been of sound mind, since no sane person would bid adieu to Allah in order to say, “Hello, Jesus, I’m your boy.” That principle applies all around. If you stop and think about it, a case could be made that a person who isn’t born into it but, as an adult, goes and Christianizes himself is a little cuckoo too.

Understand, it’s not a case that a practical person would argue in front of any American court, but privately the ever-diminishing circle of infidels, agnostics and Mark Twain admirers do speculate about whether or not faith is a form of psychosis, on account of which Mr. Rahman and a lot of other people ought to be grazing in the back pastures of the funny farm.

However that may be, a temporary expedient was found. The Afghani Board of Muslim Psychiatry examined Mr. Rahman and found him to be mentally incompetent. As any serious Muslim knows, nobody of sound mind would tootle off and convert to Christianity.

If they had shot Mr. Rahman—or is this a stoning-to-death offense, or a head-chopper, or dangle-by-the-necker?—an ear-splitting schrei of empathy and indignation would have swelled up around the developed world, as we say to distinguish ourselves from Arabs and others who need our help and guidance.

But Christians haven’t always reacted with such compassionate vehemence when one of their number was offed for his or her faith. Sometimes they seemed to enjoy it.

Take Joan of Arc, who got toasted because she wasn’t praying in the right direction (or was it because she was hearing the wrong voices?). Ever since, Christians have doted on her and seem almost grateful to the men who popped her onto the bonfire.

Also, if the killers of Christians wear grass skirts or feathers, they get a pass when they plop the occasional missionary in a pot. Apparently, the appetite of some underdevelopeds for fricassee of missionary is overlooked or understood. One must respect diversity, at least up to a point.

But wasting Mr. Rahman is past that point. An indignant uproar over the case has seized the Christian and formerly Christian nations of the West, plus South Korea, which is half Christian, and Japan, where they practice Shinto, a religion that Americans don’t know much about but which is basically O.K., given that the Japanese are first-rate, dependable allies. The Americans and their associates had no idea when they conquered—or half-conquered—Afghanistan and promised the locals self-determination that they would take the Westerners at their word.

As with the lunkheaded Palestinians voting in the bloody Hamas terrorists, backward peoples like the Afghans interpret everything you say literally. Thus, when the Christians from the United States say that you may have self-determination, they mean within reason, which does not include hanging Christians, of which there is only a meager supply in those regions.

These primitive mountain tribesmen are a completely unnuanced crowd that has put Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a pickle. Since the selfsame countries are putting up the money and the soldiers to keep the Afghan government more or less functioning, how was the man supposed to please his foreign backers with their religious ideas and his hometown mullahs with theirs?

So he came up with a way to keep Mr. Rahman safe, out of jail and in a country where there are as many churches per capita as there are mosques in Mecca. Premier Silvio Berlusconi, currently running for re-election, told the Italian media (most of which he owns): “We will be happy to welcome a man who has shown great courage.”

We don’t know if Mr. Rahman will be safe in Italy. The mullahs have been known to dispatch fatwa killers halfway around the globe. On the more hopeful side, it is reported that Kofi Annan is trying to arrange for Mr. Rahman to be placed in the convert-protection program where he will be safe, though he must change his name to Horace Busby and live the rest of his life as a Mormon in Utah.

If the Muslims do finally waste Mr. Rahman, they may be cooking their own goose and doing Christianity a favor. You know the old saying: “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.” It would be a pretty good deal for Mr. Rahman too, because, just like the religion he left, the Christians believe that if you die for your faith, you go straight up to the Holy Land in the sky. But—and this is a bit of a bummer—in Christianity you do not get to do the nasty with the virgins up there. Instead, you are given a horn to toot. Did they tell Mr. Rahman that before they led him to the baptismal font?

Actually, Mr. Rahman is supposed to have abandoned Allah for Jesus in Germany, where faith switching or faith abjuring has been no big deal since the days of Friedrich Nietzsche. The old übermensch-er has been dead for more than a century, but his baleful influence has spread so wide that some here in America lined up at museum doors to gawk and gape at Andres Serrano’s Piss Christ, as the artist not so diplomatically entitled his arrangement of the Christian Lord and Savior tucked into a bottle of Mr. Serrano’s urine.

God, if there is one, only knows what would have happened to Mr. Serrano had he pulled that stunt in Afghanistan and put the Prophet in his little bottle. They would have been able to bag Mr. Serrano on multiple counts. You are not supposed to draw pictures of Muhammad, much less dunk him in a container of bodily fluids and then put him on exhibit. In America, when an artist does something like that, they take his grant away, but farther east the repercussions are more drastic.

Compared to Mr. Serrano, Mr. Rahman’s apostasy hardly counts. Nevertheless, one hates to think of what they would have done to Mr. Serrano, considering the way an Afghan posse tried to put Mr. Rahman in the past tense for the decidedly lesser crime of God jumping.

In our part of the world, God jumping is frequently looked on with approbation. It’s sometimes called “experimenting,” as in “The boy is trying to find himself.” One thing is sure: When the kid comes home in saffron sheets, bald as a basketball or a basketball player, and says he’s a Buddhist, the vigilantes over at the True Vine Fundamentalist Church confine themselves to verbally sending him to the nether regions.

In Kabul, if you’re born a Muslim, you stay one or else. It used to be like that in Kansas: If you were born a Methodist you did not dare to let some Baptist preacher lead you into the baptismal tank with nothing on but your undies. These days, it’s O.K. in Kansas for Methodists to turn themselves into Baptists or Lutherans, although turning Jew is not recommended. But turning anything in Kabul means kaboom!—the big kibosh. They won’t give it a rest; the fatwas start flying and a prudent God jumper heads for the ground (or, in Mr. Mr. Rahman’s case, Italy).

He escaped the gibbet and was let out of jail when it was decided that he couldn’t have been of sound mind, since no sane person would bid adieu to Allah in order to say, “Hello, Jesus, I’m your boy.” That principle applies all around. If you stop and think about it, a case could be made that a person who isn’t born into it but, as an adult, goes and Christianizes himself is a little cuckoo too.

Understand, it’s not a case that a practical person would argue in front of any American court, but privately the ever-diminishing circle of infidels, agnostics and Mark Twain admirers do speculate about whether or not faith is a form of psychosis, on account of which Mr. Rahman and a lot of other people ought to be grazing in the back pastures of the funny farm.

However that may be, a temporary expedient was found. The Afghani Board of Muslim Psychiatry examined Mr. Rahman and found him to be mentally incompetent. As any serious Muslim knows, nobody of sound mind would tootle off and convert to Christianity.

If they had shot Mr. Rahman—or is this a stoning-to-death offense, or a head-chopper, or dangle-by-the-necker?—an ear-splitting schrei of empathy and indignation would have swelled up around the developed world, as we say to distinguish ourselves from Arabs and others who need our help and guidance.

But Christians haven’t always reacted with such compassionate vehemence when one of their number was offed for his or her faith. Sometimes they seemed to enjoy it.

Take Joan of Arc, who got toasted because she wasn’t praying in the right direction (or was it because she was hearing the wrong voices?). Ever since, Christians have doted on her and seem almost grateful to the men who popped her onto the bonfire.

Also, if the killers of Christians wear grass skirts or feathers, they get a pass when they plop the occasional missionary in a pot. Apparently, the appetite of some underdevelopeds for fricassee of missionary is overlooked or understood. One must respect diversity, at least up to a point.

But wasting Mr. Rahman is past that point. An indignant uproar over the case has seized the Christian and formerly Christian nations of the West, plus South Korea, which is half Christian, and Japan, where they practice Shinto, a religion that Americans don’t know much about but which is basically O.K., given that the Japanese are first-rate, dependable allies. The Americans and their associates had no idea when they conquered—or half-conquered—Afghanistan and promised the locals self-determination that they would take the Westerners at their word.

As with the lunkheaded Palestinians voting in the bloody Hamas terrorists, backward peoples like the Afghans interpret everything you say literally. Thus, when the Christians from the United States say that you may have self-determination, they mean within reason, which does not include hanging Christians, of which there is only a meager supply in those regions.

These primitive mountain tribesmen are a completely unnuanced crowd that has put Afghan President Hamid Karzai in a pickle. Since the selfsame countries are putting up the money and the soldiers to keep the Afghan government more or less functioning, how was the man supposed to please his foreign backers with their religious ideas and his hometown mullahs with theirs?

So he came up with a way to keep Mr. Rahman safe, out of jail and in a country where there are as many churches per capita as there are mosques in Mecca. Premier Silvio Berlusconi, currently running for re-election, told the Italian media (most of which he owns): “We will be happy to welcome a man who has shown great courage.”

We don’t know if Mr. Rahman will be safe in Italy. The mullahs have been known to dispatch fatwa killers halfway around the globe. On the more hopeful side, it is reported that Kofi Annan is trying to arrange for Mr. Rahman to be placed in the convert-protection program where he will be safe, though he must change his name to Horace Busby and live the rest of his life as a Mormon in Utah.

If the Muslims do finally waste Mr. Rahman, they may be cooking their own goose and doing Christianity a favor. You know the old saying: “The blood of martyrs is the seed of the church.” It would be a pretty good deal for Mr. Rahman too, because, just like the religion he left, the Christians believe that if you die for your faith, you go straight up to the Holy Land in the sky. But—and this is a bit of a bummer—in Christianity you do not get to do the nasty with the virgins up there. Instead, you are given a horn to toot. Did they tell Mr. Rahman that before they led him to the baptismal font?

(And how were the Golden Globes? Dunno; The Transom doesn't watch awards given out by foreigners in Hollywood. Now, if all the nannies out there organized and gave out awards, hell yeah, turn it on. Those dudes selling fruit on the off-ramp? We'd watch that. But not this crap. And; has anyone ever said out loud that Transamerica is a horrible, horrible title? Yes, they have? Okay.)

Anyway.

Maybe everyone's noticing the gay/trannie content in these films, but is missing the point. The other film reeling it in this year is Walk the Line, and, like those other three films, it also takes place in the middle of the American sandwich, as it were; not, at least, in the elitist God-hating cities of the coast, except a few scenes as moments of contrast. (In Capote, Manhattan represents his bitterness and degradation; in Transamerica, the moral blight of the big city couldn't be underlined more boldly.)

Maybe what's doing well this year is movies about "real" America, whether that's a Hollywood lie or not. Maybe it's all best viewed in context of Sharon Waxman's Times article from, we think, June, about Hollywood being willing and oh-so-ready to cater to the post-Mel Christian market. (Plus: "No, really! Hilarious! We filmed in actual Kansas! Yes, we literally got that bitch Catherine Keener out to Kansas with only a staff of two!") And don't forget: If they think there's an audience for midgets, they'll start making movies about midgets. Maybe Hollywood wants America back, and bad.

Is The Transom a johnny-come-lately to this theory? No idea. Probably. The RSS feed conglomeration of those good folks at Defamer and Carpetbagger and TheEnvelope and all that hooplah had to be dismantled recently. Perhaps it was giving up coffee last week--our bad!--but suddenly the full venality of Hollywood awards shows has smacked one in the kisser very hard and we've decided, for now, at least, to let them go on without us. After all, the only awards those people out west should be getting is for Most Retardedly-Run Industry of Retards of All Time.

GEORGE: I’m kind of shocked you were late. It’s unlike you.

HILLY: Sorry! It’s, what, 10 minutes?

GEORGE: That’s not a big deal, right?

DR. SELMAN: It’s as big a deal as you make it.

GEORGE: Where were you?

HILLY: At work. It just takes a long time to get here.

DR. SELMAN: How are you feeling about it?

GEORGE: I think she might have gone somewhere after work. Right?

HILLY: [laughing] I didn’t.

GEORGE: I thought maybe you were nervous that we were going to talk about sex. Might have had a drink after work.

HILLY: I was nervous that we were going to talk about sex and did have a drink.

DR. SELMAN: You had a drink before coming here?

HILLY: Yes, I’m sorry—I know that’s against the rules. It’s Friday. I had a glass of wine.

[Long silence.]

GEORGE: I thought we’d talk about our weekend. Went to my mother’s place in the Hamptons.

HILLY: Well, we got there late Friday, his brother Jack was there, and he said that this woman was in the pool.

GEORGE: This woman I wrote about, this Russian party girl, sexpot, outrageous. Hilly and I have been out with her a few times.

HILLY: So Jack said that Inna was there, and that she’d been staying there as a houseguest. At first we thought he was playing a joke, because she’s a really overbearing personality. She almost never stops talking and she has an opinion on everything. But it was funny because Jack was actually telling the truth—she was there.

DR. SELMAN: A real guest?

GEORGE: It turned out that Jack was pranking me. He had run into her at the Jitney, invited her over. He thought it would be really funny saying she’d been there a few days. It actually really stressed me out. But it worked out—she stayed and the four of us watched Eye of the Needle. Then what did we do the rest of the weekend?

HILLY: You had wanted me to wake you up on Saturday, but you wouldn’t let me. We played golf on Sunday.

GEORGE: And I didn’t really let you play, but you drove the golf cart.

HILLY: It was really fun.

DR. SELMAN: So you discussed in advance to talk about sex?

HILLY: You gave us an assignment, which was that George would—instead of staying out late—would go home with me to have personal affairs.

DR. SELMAN: Did that work out?

HILLY: No, he didn’t do it. He actually went out, he didn’t invite me, and the next day there was a picture of him on newyorksocialdiary.com with Lauren Davis, probably the most gorgeous woman in the whole city.

GEORGE: Actually I was working, interviewing someone at that party. But we have been intimate a number of times since we were last here. So no problems there! Did I tell you it’s official: I’ve had sex with you more than anyone else in my life?

HILLY: Really?

DR. SELMAN: How would you know that?

GEORGE: There are only two or three other possibilities. But that’s something there, right?

DR. SELMAN: What do you think that means?

GEORGE: Well, it means we’ve been together for a long time and we’re still doing that. Still having sex! I was thinking it’s a good thing. When we do it, we don’t need a lot of bells and whistles—it’s pretty straightforward. Aside from doing it on the floor or maybe foreplay when I’m driving sometimes ….

HILLY: Oh, yeah.

GEORGE: One time I asked you to do that thing, to go out in the hallway and … never mind. Is this making you uncomfortable?

HILLY: Um, a little, yeah.

DR. SELMAN: She did have a drink before she came.

GEORGE: How many drinks?

HILLY [laughing]: One large glass of wine.

GEORGE: Can I tell the story? This was maybe six months into our relationship. I think I was just kidding, picked this up from a Fellini movie: I wanted her to go out in the hallway and then knock on the door and pretend to have knocked on the wrong door. Maybe there was something about wearing a wig ….

HILLY: A wig, yes.

GEORGE: She didn’t like that.

HILLY: The whole wig thing makes me think that you’d like to imagine I was someone else.

GEORGE: I just thought it would be funny if you wore a red or green wig. Just for fun.

DR. SELMAN: I’m curious, do you have any feelings about George going out that night and not inviting you, and then you see him on a Web site?

HILLY: Um, you know what bothered me? You called me from one of the parties and told me, “But I did invite you.” You actually hadn’t. I was fine, I was out with girlfriends, I was in bed by 11:30. Which is what I’d wanted. But the fact that you thought you had invited me, but you actually hadn’t ….

DR. SELMAN: What do you take that to mean?

HILLY: I guess he probably was nervous. I think you said, “You should have come to this. I can’t believe you’re not here. You would have had so much fun.” I said, “Well, I would have, but you didn’t invite me.”

GEORGE: I’m sorry; I didn’t know what it was going to be like. I was going there to interview someone, and then I realized it was the kind of thing where you could have been there.

HILLY: That’s fine. But, I don’t know, next time just say that instead of “I did invite you.”

DR. SELMAN: What about that is so troubling?

HILLY: I guess the dishonesty.

GEORGE: What?

HILLY [laughing]: I don’t think it was a blatant …. I don’t think he was intentionally trying to lie to me. And wasn’t I in a really cranky mood all week?

GEORGE: It sounds like you are right now.

DR. SELMAN: Are you in a cranky mood?

GEORGE: She has been for the past few days.

HILLY: Definitely.

DR. SELMAN: Something you’d like to talk about?

HILLY: I feel like I don’t have time to get everything done at work. The day goes by so quickly, and before I know it it’s 6 o’clock.

DR. SELMAN: How would you define “cranky”?

HILLY: Just a pretty negative mood all day and highly irritable.

GEORGE: Nothing I did, right?

HILLY: No.

DR. SELMAN: Why would you think you had a hand in it?

GEORGE: Sometimes, if I press her, she’ll go, “Well, there is this one thing you did.”

HILLY: Well … last night I thought I was supposed to come over, and usually when George has a big night out, the day after he’s really looking forward to our time together. So he had a big night on Wednesday—

GEORGE: The same night we were just talking about.

HILLY: No, the night after that.

GEORGE: No, I only went out that one night.

HILLY: No, Tuesday night was the Carolina Herrera party and Wednesday night was Andrew.

GEORGE: No, that was all the same night.

HILLY: I’m sorry—you’re right. But I thought I was going to come over yesterday, but you nipped that in the bud.

GEORGE: I did?

HILLY: Just because you had to work.

GEORGE: Yeah, been behind on some things.

HILLY: But that’s nothing I’ve been dwelling on.

GEORGE: Well, you’re gonna come over later, right? But I can’t take you out to dinner. She told you I have to postdate a check? I have this fantasy life where I get fixated on things. The latest one is, I have to get out of print journalism. I’m 37 and it’s just not …. I have $10 in the bank. This doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. It’s sort of like I’m stuck. I can’t go to business school. So I’ll fantasize for hours about how I’m going to go back to Lawrence, Kan., get an apartment for $400 a month and just sit around and read. Get my job back at the Free State Brewery, washing dishes.

DR. SELMAN: You ever see the Twilight Zone episode “Hooverville”?

GEORGE: Hooterville?

DR. SELMAN: Hooverville. The guy falls asleep on the train, and he wakes up and he’s in Hooverville, and he grew up there.

GEORGE: What happens?

DR. SELMAN: It’s a Twilight Zone episode. There’s always an irony involved.

GEORGE: Well I could go back to K.U. Do that for a year or two.

DR. SELMAN: Where would Hilly be while all this goes on?

GEORGE: She could come and visit. I’m sure I’d come back here. It’s just a fantasy—it’s not something I’m going to do.

HILLY: See, I have a theory, though—and this is probably way out-of-line for me to be saying—but I’ve always had this feeling that the publications you write for are taking advantage of you. Because he is so well-known and so well-regarded, and I have this feeling that maybe your forte is maybe not to negotiate finances.

GEORGE: I don’t understand why print journalists are paid so little. Why not pay lawyers like that?

DR. SELMAN: So you’re unhappy with your life and you would like to run away from it?

GEORGE: Mmm-hmm.

DR. SELMAN: Well, it’s interesting. If you’re so dissatisfied with your life the way it is, aren’t there other ways out—other than running away and becoming a busboy in Kansas? There are any number of changes you can make in your life right now.

GEORGE: What’s my point? O.K., this is a young man’s profession. I can’t do this kind of thing when I’m 50. O.K., write a book—I’d have to find some great subject, and I’d have to spend a year following these people around. Then it’ll be another year and half to write it, and then it’ll come out another year later, and 10,000 people read it. That’s like four years. Can we talk about you and your “cooking”?

HILLY: Sure.

GEORGE: This is one thing we have that’s an issue. What am I about to say?

HILLY: George doesn’t like the fact that I don’t wake up in the morning and whip up a batch of, what, hotcakes. I don’t know—what do you want?

GEORGE: That’s not it.

HILLY: And that, late at night, I can’t run into the kitchen and suddenly make caviar and gravlax appear.

GEORGE: Nope.

HILLY: So finally I did try to cook for him a few times, and it made him sick. He was ill for two days. I made chicken and dumplings.

GEORGE: Pretty much every time we go out to dinner—except maybe one occasion—I’ve paid for it, right? Right?

HILLY: I don’t keep track.

GEORGE: I just thought maybe it would be nice if we went to the grocery store and we made dinner. We’ve never done that.

HILLY: Well, because two people aren’t allowed in the kitchen at the same time.

GEORGE: We can take turns. I love going out to dinner with you, but it’s always, “I wanna go to Isabella’s.”

DR. SELMAN: Who pays when you go out?

GEORGE: I do. Every time. “I wanna go to Shun Lee … Mr. Chow.”

HILLY: That’s the way things work.

GEORGE: Listen to that. Why? The boy—

HILLY: You’re a man. I’m a woman. I have to pay for cosmetics, highlights, clothes, high heels, shoe repairs, stockings, lots of stuff. Lots of hair expenses.

GEORGE: How much does your hair cost?

HILLY: A lot of money.

GEORGE: Hundreds, right?

HILLY: Yeah. And that’s just the way things work. You don’t have to deal with that stuff.

GEORGE: She’s serious, by the way. Can we have an interpretation?

HILLY: Maybe I’m a little old-fashioned this way. The tables might turn if we were legally bound to each other. And we shared a bank account or something.

GEORGE: I think someone could argue if you go out with someone for three and half years, maybe they could pay for the occasional taxi.

HILLY: Why buy the cow when you can get the milk for free?

GEORGE: The occasional movie.

DR. SELMAN: You could get married, George, and write about how horrible it is.

[Silence.]

DR. SELMAN: It occurs to me that since things are so horrible the way you are—I mean, assuming that you’re not entirely enamored with the way things are going—that you could make changes to your life even within your relationship. You could get married. That would be a change. Move in together.

GEORGE: Well, now, that’s sort of … O.K. now.

DR. SELMAN: Wouldn’t that change things?

GEORGE: Well.

HILLY: Well, I wouldn’t move in. I would not want to live with you. Unless we were … the “M” word. But like, ideally, what I would love is if we had some kind of a place where we lived, and I was upstairs and you were downstairs.

GEORGE: Separate bathrooms.

HILLY: Separate bathrooms, separate bedrooms.

GEORGE: And a country house. Yeah, that’s realistic when you’re making what I’m making.

DR. SELMAN: Why would you want to get married to someone who makes so little money?

HILLY: Because I love Georgie.

DR. SELMAN: So she would have you despite that.

GEORGE: Wait—I sometimes worry that I have the appearance of being well-to-do, don’t I?

HILLY: George, you walk around with holes in your shoes!

GEORGE: It’s always going to be like this.

HILLY: I don’t care. Maybe our two-story apartment with adjoining staircase will be in Hoboken. I don’t even think we can afford that.

GEORGE. So we’ve covered sex, money.

DR. SELMAN: You want to change the topic?

GEORGE: No. Things will probably work out. In my career. I am getting money next week. So money won’t be a concern. It’s kind of fun being broke. What can we do with this $40. How much do you have?

HILLY: I think about $15.

GEORGE: We can’t really go out anywhere, but that’s O.K.

DR. SELMAN: How do you end up with more money than she does?

HILLY: I almost never have a dime to my name. I have to pay for cat food with pennies. It’s pathetic.

DR. SELMAN: Why do you have to spend it all on hair and cosmetics?

HILLY: It’s expensive to live in Manhattan and be blond.

GEORGE: You order from the Cowgirl Hall of Fame every night.

HILLY: No. Haven’t ordered there in three months. I feel confident at the rate things are going, within the next couple of years, I’ll be making considerably more. I love my job; I think I’m on a good path to greater success, career-wise.

GEORGE: I was going to ask you about Freud.

DR. SELMAN: What about him?

GEORGE: Just because we have this picture of his office on the wall. I know very little about him … [to HILLY] Do you know anything about Freud?

HILLY: Yes. I remember the first time you came to my apartment, you saw The Interpretation of Dreams on my bookshelf and you said, “What are you doing with that?”

DR. SELMAN: How do you think talking about Freud would be relevant to your couples therapy?

GEORGE: We have this picture of his office here, right? I thought we could relate it somehow.

DR. SELMAN: So you see me as like a latter-day Freud?

GEORGE: No, I just thought it would be cool to learn, to have some insight into him.

DR. SELMAN: Freud had an interesting life.

GEORGE: What do you think he would make of us?

DR. SELMAN: Probably the same thing I make of you. I feel that that took the focus off of what we were talking about.

GEORGE: What were we talking about before?

DR. SELMAN: Well, you started out saying how dissatisfied you were with just about everything—to the point where you’d move to Lawrence, Kan. And there was even some talk of the “M” word here.

GEORGE: Right.

DR. SELMAN: That was one of the original issues that you wanted to work on in couples therapy.

GEORGE: Right, right.

DR. SELMAN: It seemed like we were sort of touching upon it.

GEORGE: I think it’s a good step that I can at least talk about it. Part of me has a real fear of that. Terror.

DR. SELMAN: We also talked about antidepressants.

GEORGE: [to HILLY] You thought it was a bad idea, right?

HILLY: Um ….

GEORGE: What are the side effects?

DR. SELMAN: Well, we were just discussing different options. Another was for you to drink less.

GEORGE: Once or twice a week. I like to have a wild night on the town—I gotta do that once a week.

DR. SELMAN: But you yourself said that you can’t be doing this anymore.

GEORGE: You’re right. The other night, I ended up back in a friend’s apartment with a bunch of people at 5 a.m. We were watching some dumb video with a retarded guy going around interviewing people. This is going to sound really awful, but at one point, someone pulled a gun. It wasn’t loaded. But he was like, “Hey, look what I got here!”

DR. SELMAN: This was in the apartment? This was not the video?

GEORGE [to HILLY]: Did I tell you about this incident?

HILLY: No. I knew he had a gun, though.

GEORGE: Anyway, I left after the gun came out.

DR. SELMAN: Wise choice. Who had the gun?

GEORGE: Some guy I know. I know how it sounds, but—

DR. SELMAN: How does it sound?

GEORGE: Like that might have been a really bad scene.

HILLY: Ha ha ha! Like New Jack City!

DR. SELMAN: I guess we should end it here on this happy note.

[to be continued]

—George Gurley

Prior Articles:

George and Hilly published 10/17/05George and Hilly published 10/10/05
George and Hilly published 10/03/05
George ’n’ Hilly, Back in Couples, Turn on the Doc published 09/26/05
But Should We Get Married? Part III published 08/29/05
But Should We Get Married? published 08/15/05
Should I Get Married? My Hilly Joining Me In Couples Session published 08/08/05

Preening starlets and Us Weekly will carry very little cachet inside the walls of Alice Tully Hall; the stars of this festival are directors often unknown outside cinephile circles: This year, Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-hsien (Three Times) and Romania’s Cristi Puiu (The Death of Mr. Lazarescu) generate as much heat as Steven Soderbergh (Bubble). The audience is notoriously precious: One of the first showings to sell out this year was The Passenger, the film Michelangelo Antonioni made—in 1975. Also glaringly absent: little statuettes like Cannes’ Palme D’Or or Venice’s Golden Lion. The competition at the New York Film Festival is all about getting in.

“I’ve been turned down many more times than I’ve been accepted, as I think has everyone,” said Michael Barker, co-president of Sony Pictures Classics. “It’s a festival of great integrity.” This year, Mr. Barker has five films—including Neil Jordan’s Breakfast on Pluto, Michael Haneke’s Caché and Bennett Miller’s Capote—in the festival.

“It’s a quieter festival. It has a kind of quiet dignity to it,” said Premiere magazine’s editor in chief, Peter Herbst. “I think that Sundance and Toronto and Cannes are wonderful film festivals. Part of the fun of those festivals is their market atmosphere—you’re not only seeing films, you’re watching the business arm of the movie business at its most interesting and sometimes most rapacious. At the New York Film Festival, you don’t get that. For someone like me, who grew up going to the revival houses in Manhattan—the Thalia, the New Yorker, and seeing great foreign films at the Waverly downtown—this is the festival that’s stayed true to that sort of way at looking at film. In the face of fashion and sensation, it still supports great understated filmmakers who bring you into the world of other countries.”

“It hasn’t wavered in what it is and what it’s tried to be,” said Peter Newman, producer of the Noah Baumbach–directed festival entry The Squid and the Whale. “They don’t pay attention to hype or what the outside world is talking about. It’s really about a love and appreciation of films.”

In 1962, the composer and Lincoln Center president William Schuman decided that New York City needed a film festival; at the time, the only film festival in the United States was in San Francisco. He looked to the London Film Festival, which was then presided over by an American living abroad named Richard Roud. Mr. Schuman persuaded Roud to join forces with Amos Vogel, who was running the avant-garde Manhattan film society Cinema 16 and had been among the first to show Americans works by Roman Polanski, John Cassavetes, Robert Bresson and Michelangelo Antonioni.

The first New York Film Festival opened in 1963 with Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel. Mr. Vogel resigned in 1969; Roud’s influence shaped the following festivals, as New York film fans became intimately acquainted with Fassbinder, Godard and Truffaut. Martin Scorsese’s early feature Mean Streets played at the festival in 1973, and he’s credited the festival for jump-starting his career. Terrence Malick, Woody Allen and Milos Forman also received boosts.

“The first New York Film Festival movie I went to see was Le Dernier Métro by Francois Truffaut,” said Michael Barker. “I remember how hard it was to get a ticket; I had gone with my mother to see ‘the French film.’ Gérard Depardieu and Catherine Deneuve were there, and Néstor Almendros, the cinematographer. I was awestruck. I had moved to New York from Texas, and that was one of the greatest things. It was amazing.”

Things were certainly always interesting: There was the time a group of nuns picketed and extra security was needed for a 1985 showing of Godard’s Hail Mary. Or the time when U.S. Customs seized Nagisa Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses before it could be shown due to naughty content. Speaking of explicit sexual content, some audience members walked out during Bernardo Bertolucci’s Last Tango in Paris. In the following New Yorker, Pauline Kael called the evening “A landmark … comparable to … the night Le Sacre du Printemps was first performed.”

“There was a film, The Assassination of Trotsky, one of the last ones that Richard Burton did, and it got blasted by reviewers,” said Observer movie critic and former festival committee member Andrew Sarris. “The idea of Richard Burton as Trotsky was almost sacrilegious. The audience at the film festival just stood up and applauded.”

The biggest scandal occurred in 1987, when Roud was ousted after what were termed “administrative difficulties” with Joanne Koch, the executive director of the festival, and Alfred Stern, the president of the Film Society of Lincoln Center. Not surprisingly, the chattering class was a dull roar of speculation. Richard Corliss of Time and David Denby, then with New York magazine, resigned in protest from the selection committee. “What I feared would happen did happen,” Mr. Denby told The New York Times. “It looks like the old idea of what the New York Film Festival was is dead …. The whole idea of the festival was that it would offer the vanguard of taste.”

“At this point it’s so far away, and I certainly am not the person to want to open that up,” said Richard Peña, Roud’s replacement, who runs the show as program director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and chairman of the festival’s selection committee. “I think, unhappily, it was a very bad relationship between two good people, and unfortunately it came to a head.”

Mr. Peña, who’d been hired to be the program director of the Film Society before Mr. Roud’s ousting, had the unenviable task of stepping into some big shoes. He started to push past the boundaries of Roud’s charmed Europe (some speculated that it was Roud’s fear of flying that kept him from exploring other countries), bringing in more filmmakers from East Asia, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa. Festival-goers were introduced to Quentin Tarantino, Mike Leigh, Wes Anderson, Ang Lee and Paul Thomas Anderson. Those who may have feared the worst with Roud’s departure began to relax.

“The most noticeable thing is that it hasn’t changed,” said Mr. Newman. “It’s stuck to its doctrine.”

“I always felt the consistency,” agreed Mr. Barker. “I always felt the consistency in the way it’s been run and the way it’s been operated.”

For Mr. Peña’s part, these are words gratefully heard. “Nothing would make me happier than to think that I’m carrying on the tradition of Richard, and Amos Vogel,” he said. “They had a wonderful vision.”

A vision which continues to be gobbled up by the mischievously stereotyped New York film-festival audience: well-educated, film-loving Upper West Side and West Village liberals (cue the guy talking about Marshall McLuhan behind Woody Allen on line during Annie Hall).

“We look for viewers who see going to the movies as a kind of adventure,” said Mr. Peña. “I think very often we’ve been told that people go to the movies to slip into something comfortable. New York Film Festival audiences want to do that sometimes, but at least at certain times of the year, they would like to be challenged. We have enough of an audience that is truly looking for very demanding work. I hear it all the time from filmmakers—how astonished they are at the Q&A sessions about just how knowledgeable our audience is.”

“I think it’s a smart crowd, but a lot of people don’t realize that there’s a substantial younger crowd that comes too,” said Mr. Barker. “People used to think it was just an older Upper West Side crowd; that’s not really the case.” Old stereotypes die hard. “It’s not a festival environment,” said a downtown type with bleached spiky hair who regularly attends the festival. “There’s usually some 80-year-old woman with breathing problems trying to bump your elbow off the arm rest.”

This year, the film festival’s choices are as eclectic as ever: It opens with the George Clooney–directed Good Luck, and Good Night, shot in black and white, about Edward R. Murrow’s 1954 battles with Senator Joe McCarthy. There’s Sympathy for Lady Vengeance, from South Korea’s Park Chan-wook, and the latest from Lars von Trier, Manderlay.

Producer Peter Newman summed it up: “Other than the fact that it’s good for The Squid and the Whale, and it’s our home town, the thing I’m most grateful for is that I’m getting tickets to it.”

“Being at Lincoln Center keeps me honest,” said Mr. Peña. “I’m working at a place that had George Balanchine—we’re not kidding around here, a genius! The fact that you’re working in the same institution kind of makes you think maybe we can head in that direction.”

GEORGE: Why even bring that up? I don’t think there’s any reason to say I’ve yelled at my cat. I mean, you got me: I’m guilty. And you’ve seen what that cat can do.

HILLY: Sorry.

GEORGE: I need a refuge, I don’t know—don’t I get uncomfortable in public places?

HILLY: Yeah, I think in a similar way I do—but I react inwardly, which frustrates you, because you don’t know what I’m thinking.

GEORGE: And when you come over, we always watch television—movies—and we always get alcohol, that’s another source of conflict. So I think that adds to the irritability.

DR. SELMAN: Can you elaborate?

GEORGE: O.K. The TV part or the alcohol part?

DR. SELMAN: Alcohol.

GEORGE: I would say that 50 to 85 percent of the time we’ve spent together, there has been some alcohol involved. It’s usually in the evening when I see you. I’m not saying I don’t drink when you’re not around, but I think—haven’t I mentioned this before?

HILLY: He mentions it a lot. He gets mad at me; he calls me the guzzler.

GEORGE: I don’t know, maybe she’ll have three or four glasses of wine. But she’s not out all night, like I do sometimes, and then she gets up at the crack of dawn and goes to work, works hard all day. It’s sort of a ritual: She’ll come over, and I’ll just feel it, I’ll know that she wants me to go out and get us a bottle of Sancerre. I’m always willing to do that. I feel unproductive sometimes. The thing is, I want you to come over, and I encourage it, persuade you to come over, maybe even demand that you come over. But then, at some point, I feel I’m being unproductive and I should have read for three hours, and why am I watching this silly movie?

HILLY: I am an enabler.

DR. SELMAN: An enabler is someone that enables another person not to function.

HILLY: Well, if I show up with a bottle of wine ….

DR. SELMAN: You enable him to drink. You both drink like a bottle of wine each?

HILLY: No, no. It’s funny, too, because I do this thing with drinking that he doesn’t. I like to drink when I’m sitting around at home, not really doing anything, watching a movie, puttering around. He, on the other hand, likes to do it when he’s out socializing. And so what’s happened more over the time we’ve been together is that I drink consistently, for the most part, but George instead will go out a couple nights a week and stay out really late. If he ever brings something up to me—which is nice, I think it’s sweet, because it shows concern about me drinking—I can always easily use the defense that “Who are you to criticize when you stay out until 6 o’clock in the morning?”

DR. SELMAN: Pot calling the kettle black. Do you get drunk at those times?

GEORGE: Yeah, binge drinking. Nightclubs, bars. I am a nightlife reporter, but that can sometimes be an excuse to overdo it. We have sort of different schedules. I stay up late no matter what. Go to bed at 2, 3 in the morning, get up at 11 or so. By the time she comes over at 8 or 9 p.m., she’s sort of winding down, and that’s like late afternoon for me, you know. So I’m really awake, and she’s ready for bed by midnight. But anytime we’ve hung out during the day, it’s a different story—a better thing.

DR. SELMAN: How do you think alcohol affects your relationship? It sounds as if you raised the issue in the context of problems in the relationship. She was saying you’re irritable a lot and angry, she mentions a couple of times where you’ve had outbursts and yelled at the cat, the fuse or whatever—very often, people get irritable when they drink. Sometimes they get depressed after they drink. A hangover really is withdrawal from alcohol. You get headachy, irritable, anxious; sometimes people have panic attacks after a night of drinking.

HILLY: When the fuse thing happened, you’d been out the night before.

DR. SELMAN: Were you drinking before the “scratchy” incident?

HILLY: One glass.

GEORGE: One glass of wine.

DR. SELMAN: A little bit. It sounds like alcohol has a central role in both of your lives. You both like to drink.

GEORGE: Yep. O.K.

HILLY: And I think when we go out together, it’s less of an issue or problem. Talking about this makes me realize there’s a pretty easy solution on my part, which of course I won’t like, but I like our relationship a lot more than I like drinking—so I’d rather give that up.

GEORGE: I’d also like to be able to go out and not stay out all night.

DR. SELMAN: So I guess that you could probably both agree that if there was no alcohol involved, your relationship might be very different.

HILLY: Sometimes I get frustrated because he frequently says, “I wish I hadn’t stayed out, I wish I’d had the will power to go home at 2 o’clock.” And I always think, “Well, just discipline yourself. Give yourself a curfew, come home at 2 o’clock.”

GEORGE: She’s really good about that.

DR. SELMAN: Why do you go out so late?

GEORGE: There’s the nightlife reporting. My regular haunts. Siberia. Bellevue. Bungalow 8. Dusk. That’s sort of my social life, aside from going to work and interviewing people. I think I get kind of excited when I go out, run into people I know, and I want to extract as much as I can.

DR. SELMAN: It’s kind of an occupational hazard. You’re a nightlife reporter, then?

GEORGE: Well, I have done stories on nightlife figures, covered parties. I mean, today I was by myself, in my apartment until 6 p.m. And don’t you think I’m going out less frequently lately?

HILLY: Absolutely.

GEORGE: Tonight there’s a chance I might go out. But I’m going to do everything I can to resist it.

DR. SELMAN: Chance you’re going to go out?

GEORGE: There’s a really good party, for the Aristocrats movie, and I hope I’m not on the list. I could be persuaded to go out. By Saturday, I will have had a late night, I’m sure.

DR. SELMAN: And he goes out by himself without you?

HILLY: Well, it depends. I started the job I have now in September, and I love it more than any other job I’ve ever had. Before that, I used to go out a little bit more during the week. Now I’m almost reluctant to even start, because I feel if I’m not at home, in bed, or ready to go to sleep by 11 o’clock, then I won’t perform as well the next day. So I can’t enjoy myself as much now. Which is a shame. It would be nice if I could go out to these places and not drink—maybe that would be a different story. But to me, that’s all part of the fun. So what happens is he’ll go out and I’m fine, and I think that’s a really good thing about our relationship, being able to go our separate ways from time to time so we don’t feel that we’re smothering each other. However—and this might go back to the communication thing—sometimes I feel a little paranoid and a little jealous: I know what it’s like going out, and I just have this feeling that there are all kinds of girls throwing themselves at him. I trust him, but there was one infidelity issue that happened early in the relationship, so I think that probably adds to my paranoia sometimes. That’s another thing that I’d like to accomplish.

DR. SELMAN: Do you consider yourselves in a monogamous relationship?

HILLY: Yes.

GEORGE: (Pause) Yeah.

HILLY: That’s something we discussed early on, and there were tests involved.

GEORGE: Can I say something? I’m having some difficulties with the “end of youth.” I’m 37. On the one hand, I’m welcoming it and like the idea of being more responsible than I was four years ago, 10 years ago, but at the same time it’s hurting me. That’s coinciding with the loss of the, uh, sense of freedom. Part of it I welcome, part of it I’m sort of uncomfortable with. That make sense? Like I know it’s good for me being in this relationship, it’s centering me, but—and I know this is pretty common stuff, but I have this other part of me that—you know, like I’ve told you, “Don’t e-mail me in the morning”?

HILLY: Right.

GEORGE: Just the loss of surprise and ….

DR. SELMAN: Where do you guys think you want to go in the relationship? Where do you want to take it?

GEORGE: Can I say what just popped into my mind? “Status quo.”

HILLY: What does that mean?

GEORGE: I kind of just want to keep it where we are for now.

DR. SELMAN: And you?

HILLY: Well, I can’t imagine or I would hate for George not to be my boyfriend. I would hate it. I can’t imagine life without him. We discussed the word “marriage.” I think that I have a lot of bad habits that I need to still grow out of. I think it’s important to be in control of one’s self before getting involved in something that important financially, emotionally, living somewhere near each other. I don’t think it would be fair to drag in some of my dirty baggage. But down the road, it seems like it would be a nice thing.

GEORGE: I’m not averse to that. I think when we first met, that first night, didn’t I say I didn’t want to get married until I was 40?

HILLY: Yeah.

GEORGE: But by “status quo,” that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t like to ….

DR. SELMAN: That some day you might consider getting married.

GEORGE: Yeah. “Status quo” might have sounded bad, but I mean that here we are in therapy—I’d like to improve the relationship. I did give you a ring.

HILLY: It’s a promise ring. And he didn’t want to get it for me, but I told him that the relationship would be over if he didn’t. Because it’s just something—after so long, I just felt it was a nice kind of token of commitment. I could just know that it would help me feel better on those nights, for example, when he’s out, thinking that he isn’t going to jump in the arms of some hussy.

GEORGE: That was after three years, right? That’s like a pre-engagement kind of ring.

HILLY: Yeah. I would say at least 85 percent of our time together, if not 90, is positive. And I think that a lot of the negative things may come from myself and my inability to communicate. I don’t think George has ever heard me say that I get paranoid and jealous on nights like that when you’re out. But you probably figured it out. I mean, I think there’s some things like that we should be able to just tell each other.

Later, after that first session, over dinner on the Upper West Side, I told Hilly she could have only one glass of wine and then one at home.

HILLY: I just think I’ve had a long day and it’s really hot outside; I think it’s O.K. to have one glass to start with and one glass with dinner.

GEORGE: What about have one now and one when we go home? Because if you have one now and one during the entrée, and then we go home and watch a movie, you’re gonna want another one and that’s three. You get two tonight.

HILLY: Thirsty.

GEORGE: Do you swear, when we go back to my apartment, you won’t have another one?

HILLY: No.

GEORGE: This is going to turn into a night on the town for me, do you understand me? If we order by the glass, the odds are we won’t go out tonight. If you order a bottle, I’m going out.

HILLY: O.K., I’ll just have a lemonade.

We talked about the book she was reading on irritable-male syndrome.

HILLY: They can’t even explain it themselves—it’s not their fault, it’s a chemical imbalance. Another important point is about how men can feel “emotionally sunburned,” meaning you have a sunburn on your back but I don’t know. And I come over to give you a hug, because I want you to feel better, but it actually makes you feel worse and it hurts you.

GEORGE: Right. It’s like having P.M.S.

HILLY: Yeah!

GEORGE: All the time.

A few days later, we went to our second session.

GEORGE: [to DR. SELMAN]: I think it’s going well. I feel good. I think just the act of this … this communication.

DR. SELMAN: Maybe you could educate me on each of your individual backgrounds.

[HILLY speaks of her life, then says the longest relationship she ever had before she met GEORGE was six weeks.]

HILLY: There were a couple of those. But most recently, I guess it was the guy I was dating when I met George ….

GEORGE: From the rock band?

HILLY: No. It was a guy from—he was ….

GEORGE: I don’t want to know.

HILLY: Yeah. [laughs, then shares more family history]

GEORGE: I’m like your brother—don’t I scare you?

HILLY: Uh-huh. You do funny little pranks that aren’t malicious, but still scary sometimes.

DR. SELMAN: So being with George is like being home, a combo of your mom and your brother?

HILLY: Yeah! A little bit of my dad in there, too.

DR. SELMAN: And you, George?

[GEORGE tells his history. And then:]

GEORGE: I remember in kindergarten, the first day—all the parents were there—and the teacher told everyone to put our hands in our laps. Hands were flying everywhere, but no one put them in their laps. So the teacher said, “Now, class, don’t we know what our laps are?” And I said, “I don’t know what my lap is, but I know what my penis is!”

DR. SELMAN: That’s funny.

GEORGE: A little while after that, the girl who lived next-door to me, Heidi, sort of seduced me, and we tried to have sex. I was in first grade; she was in second grade. We did it standing up, sort of touching—didn’t quite do it properly.

DR. SELMAN: And you took your clothes off?

GEORGE: Yeah, erection, touching, sort of inside but not completely.

DR. SELMAN: This was at age 7?

GEORGE: Seven or 8, and she was one year older.

DR. SELMAN: How would you know how to do that?

GEORGE: She knew.

DR. SELMAN: I take it she was a virgin?

GEORGE: We did it about 10 times. And once with another girl from the neighborhood. And then I did it with another girl, a family friend. I think it was my idea that time. This was in Kansas. There was another girl in school, Shannon, who I was in love with, and she wasn’t reciprocating. And one day I brought four or five silver dollars and bribed her to say “I love you.” That’s weird, right? And then I threw them on the ground after she said that. That’s disturbing, right?

DR. SELMAN: What do you make of that?

GEORGE: I don’t know! Into my teens, 13, 14, maybe a little action but not much. Sort of frustrated. And then the next phase, 17 to 23, doing better, but getting really infatuated, borderline obsessed with a handful of Kansas City girls at Kansas University. That was pretty serious stuff. And then I decided, after the last one, that I absolutely would not let myself get that emotionally involved, would not let that happen again. I think through my 20’s I focused on work. Dated an older woman for about three years. It was pretty clear we weren’t going to get married. Then maybe a couple other girlfriends—nothing too serious, sort of disasters—and then Hilly.

DR. SELMAN: So you were exposed to sex at an early age?

GEORGE: Yes. Just those incidents I described. I had a subscription to Playboy in sixth grade.

DR. SELMAN: But when you were 7 years old, that’s when you made the comment to the teacher, “I don’t know what my lap is, but I know what my penis is?”

GEORGE: I think that my mother told me that we were going to call it “penis” …. We weren’t going to call it some other name, you know, not gonna call it a ….

HILLY: Hoo-ha ….

GEORGE: Or tallywhacker. So I had that in my head—I knew what my penis was. Can you tell me your reaction to any of this?

DR. SELMAN: It sounds like you were exposed to sex at an early age. Most kids don’t get a chance to have intercourse at age 9.

GEORGE: I don’t know if you’d call it intercourse, but it was definitely attempted.

DR. SELMAN: You even had what was like a threesome.

GEORGE: No kidding, no kidding.

DR. SELMAN: Where was your mother when all this was going on?

GEORGE: The last time I did it—or tried to—with the girl next-door, Heidi, we were in a closet, and we had finished writing in crayon on the wall a pact that read, “I love Heidi seven days a week and she loves me on Saturday and Sunday.” We had our pants down, and my mother opened the door. I remember Heidi pulling up her jean cutoffs. And that was that. Ten years later, my mother and I visited Heidi and her family in Texas. She was engaged. Her father picked us up and said something like, “George, so what’s it like, about to see the first girl you ever had sex with?”

DR. SELMAN: What’s your reaction?

HILLY: I don’t know. First time I heard that, I didn’t really believe it, but then, I don’t know, I thought it was almost kind of sweet.

GEORGE: It was like playing truth or dare.

HILLY: Yeah!

GEORGE: When I first went to a psychologist, I had a problem with my second-grade substitute teacher, Mrs. Jones. I started calling her Mr. Jones. Made everyone laugh. She was very patient: “George, my name is Mrs. Jones, and you should call me that.” And I said, “O.K., I will call you Mrs. Jones, but you have to call me the Fonz or Fonzie.” And she agreed—she called me Fonzie. But then it sort of deteriorated, and the next thing was I wanted my desk to be away from everyone else’s. Maybe she liked this idea, because she let me move to the back against the wall away from all the other kids.

DR. SELMAN: You were defiant.

GEORGE: Obnoxious.

DR. SELMAN: Oppositional.

GEORGE: I kept acting up. Mrs. Jones would get on the intercom and say, “Mr. Gurley is ready to go home now.” One time she was at the intercom, I said, ‘Go to hell, bitch.” I told you that, right?

HILLY: I didn’t know about the “Go to hell, bitch.”

DR. SELMAN: Was that before or after the penis and the lap?

GEORGE: This would have been two years later. I think I’ve gotten better since then, right?

[Silence.]

(to be continued)