The hot issues of today will quickly fade away if the current surge in gasoline prices and home-mortgage rates continues unabated. And all indications are that both the price of gas and the cost of borrowing are moving in one direction only: north.

In fact, the 2008 Presidential election will hinge on what I call the “electability index”—a blend of gas prices and home-mortgage rates—not any policy or piece of federal legislation.

If the electability index equals or exceeds 12, there will be a massive change in the White House and Congress. Simply put, if gas prices are at $4 a gallon and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage costs more than 8 percent, the electability index will be at 12, the threshold for tossing all incumbents overboard.

The number 12 has rarely been understood as a factor in political life, but it is a central force in our culture. There were 12 apostles in the New Testament, 12 tribes of the children of Israel, 12 gates to Jerusalem, 12 months in a year and 12 astrological signs in the zodiac.

Two years from now, Americans won’t care about the war in Iraq and or even the flow of immigrants into the United States; in fact, not even the capture of Osama bin Laden himself will influence the 2008 elections if Americans cannot afford their American way of life. What matters to them is whether they can pay for their homes and drive to their jobs without a stress attack.

It’s time for the Democrats and the Republicans to recognize that American voters will have a nervous breakdown if they’re struggling to meet their mortgage payments and fill their gas tanks. Americans love nothing more than their cars and homes.

In fact, the latest car models increasingly resemble homes: with full-motion video, leather seats that recline into chaise lounges, electrical outlets for refrigerators and computers and sound systems that exceed anything designed for a living room.

As for actual homes today, they’re not shelters in the traditional sense: They include everything except the living and dining rooms. Even the Thanksgiving meal is now a buffet in the “family media room” so that everyone can watch football on a 60-inch plasma display while playing videogames on their P.D.A.’s.

The Bush years have been great for homeowners: On Election Day 2000, a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage was 7.58 percent and a one-year adjustable mortgage was 7.25 percent. Four years later, when Mr. Bush defeated John Kerry, home-mortgage rates had declined substantially, making home ownership and even mega-mansions more affordable. A 15-year fixed-rate mortgage was 5.2 percent in November 2004, a decrease of 30 percent in mortgage costs. And a one-year variable-rate mortgage was 4.18 percent in 2004, a decline of more than 40 percent in just four years.

The campaign of 2004 was not about Iraq or the war on terror, although that’s what Karl Rove made Mr. Kerry believe. It was about creating a “feel-good” climate by bringing housing costs down so low that people felt great buying homes they couldn’t really afford.

The popularity of mortgages based on variable interest rates, often covering only the interest and paying off no principal, was the real reason Mr. Bush won those tight races in the Western battleground states of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona. And Mr. Bush’s unexpectedly strong showing in Florida in 2004 wasn’t due to hanging chads but to the growth in Florida’s housing market.

There has been a 16 percent increase in the 15-year fixed mortgage since November 2004, and a 34 percent increase in the one-year adjustable-rate mortgage since 2004. The new Federal Reserve chairman has the political know-how and scholarly record to be a Princeton professor, but he lacks the political seasoning of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, who got the electability index just right for Mr. Bush. Alan Greenspan, not Karl Rove, was Bush’s brain in 2004.

As we prepare for the summer of 2006, gas prices are 90 percent higher than they were in the fall of 2000. And mortgage rates are above 6 percent, well on their way to 8 percent. Housing costs are going up in all those states where Presidential elections are determined: Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Mexico, Iowa and Colorado.

If the electability index reaches 12 by the spring of 2008, the candidate who best understands what makes America tick—home ownership and three cars in the driveway—will win.

Americans want a President who can improve their lives, not the lives of Iraqis.

The hot issues of today will quickly fade away if the current surge in gasoline prices and home-mortgage rates continues unabated. And all indications are that both the price of gas and the cost of borrowing are moving in one direction only: north.

In fact, the 2008 Presidential election will hinge on what I call the “electability index”—a blend of gas prices and home-mortgage rates—not any policy or piece of federal legislation.

If the electability index equals or exceeds 12, there will be a massive change in the White House and Congress. Simply put, if gas prices are at $4 a gallon and a 30-year fixed-rate mortgage costs more than 8 percent, the electability index will be at 12, the threshold for tossing all incumbents overboard.

The number 12 has rarely been understood as a factor in political life, but it is a central force in our culture. There were 12 apostles in the New Testament, 12 tribes of the children of Israel, 12 gates to Jerusalem, 12 months in a year and 12 astrological signs in the zodiac.

Two years from now, Americans won’t care about the war in Iraq and or even the flow of immigrants into the United States; in fact, not even the capture of Osama bin Laden himself will influence the 2008 elections if Americans cannot afford their American way of life. What matters to them is whether they can pay for their homes and drive to their jobs without a stress attack.

It’s time for the Democrats and the Republicans to recognize that American voters will have a nervous breakdown if they’re struggling to meet their mortgage payments and fill their gas tanks. Americans love nothing more than their cars and homes.

In fact, the latest car models increasingly resemble homes: with full-motion video, leather seats that recline into chaise lounges, electrical outlets for refrigerators and computers and sound systems that exceed anything designed for a living room.

As for actual homes today, they’re not shelters in the traditional sense: They include everything except the living and dining rooms. Even the Thanksgiving meal is now a buffet in the “family media room” so that everyone can watch football on a 60-inch plasma display while playing videogames on their P.D.A.’s.

The Bush years have been great for homeowners: On Election Day 2000, a 15-year fixed-rate mortgage was 7.58 percent and a one-year adjustable mortgage was 7.25 percent. Four years later, when Mr. Bush defeated John Kerry, home-mortgage rates had declined substantially, making home ownership and even mega-mansions more affordable. A 15-year fixed-rate mortgage was 5.2 percent in November 2004, a decrease of 30 percent in mortgage costs. And a one-year variable-rate mortgage was 4.18 percent in 2004, a decline of more than 40 percent in just four years.

The campaign of 2004 was not about Iraq or the war on terror, although that’s what Karl Rove made Mr. Kerry believe. It was about creating a “feel-good” climate by bringing housing costs down so low that people felt great buying homes they couldn’t really afford.

The popularity of mortgages based on variable interest rates, often covering only the interest and paying off no principal, was the real reason Mr. Bush won those tight races in the Western battleground states of Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada and Arizona. And Mr. Bush’s unexpectedly strong showing in Florida in 2004 wasn’t due to hanging chads but to the growth in Florida’s housing market.

There has been a 16 percent increase in the 15-year fixed mortgage since November 2004, and a 34 percent increase in the one-year adjustable-rate mortgage since 2004. The new Federal Reserve chairman has the political know-how and scholarly record to be a Princeton professor, but he lacks the political seasoning of former Fed chairman Alan Greenspan, who got the electability index just right for Mr. Bush. Alan Greenspan, not Karl Rove, was Bush’s brain in 2004.

As we prepare for the summer of 2006, gas prices are 90 percent higher than they were in the fall of 2000. And mortgage rates are above 6 percent, well on their way to 8 percent. Housing costs are going up in all those states where Presidential elections are determined: Florida, Ohio, Wisconsin, Arizona, New Mexico, Iowa and Colorado.

If the electability index reaches 12 by the spring of 2008, the candidate who best understands what makes America tick—home ownership and three cars in the driveway—will win.

Americans want a President who can improve their lives, not the lives of Iraqis.

These are enormous problems that demand ambitious solutions. Yet the President and the Congressional leadership have ignored three decades of scientific advancement and policy analysis, and responded with the same feeble initiatives that have failed to improve matters since 1975.

Their manifest failure to cope with the new energy crisis didn’t discourage George W. Bush from congratulating himself and exaggerating the importance of the omnibus energy legislation he just signed in New Mexico. “I’m confident that one day Americans will look back on this bill as a vital step toward a more secure and more prosperous nation that is less dependent on foreign sources of energy,” he proclaimed.

Actually, Americans are more likely to look back on this forgettable episode as yet another missed opportunity for essential change—and to resent corporate pols like Mr. Bush, who brushed aside real solutions to perform favors for friends and contributors.

The priorities of these politicians can be summed up in the following intimately related facts: Gas and oil prices are reaching record levels, above $60 a barrel, with no relief in sight for years to come. Energy-industry profits are following the same upward trajectory, as ExxonMobil boasts second-quarter earnings over $7.5 billion, an increase of 32 percent; Conoco Phillips touts $3.1 billion for the same period, a 51 percent improvement; and Kerr-McGee heralds its own tripled earnings. To address this situation, in which suffering consumers are coughing up billions to swell the corporate bottom line, Mr. Bush’s “energy bill” gives additional billions in taxpayer subsidies to the oil, gas and nuclear interests.

Clearly the President (and the Vice President) feel that super-profits and the promise of ever-greater super-profits in the market aren’t enough to encourage investment by America’s patriotic energy companies. If our “way of life” is to continue, the Bush cronies must be paid from the federal treasury as well as the gas pump, where the current cost of filling up is no less than $50. They must also be allowed more latitude to pollute air and water, and less regulation of their propensity to gouge and manipulate the prices of gas and electricity.

To be sure, the energy bill provides consumers with certain subsidies, too, which are meant to promote advanced automobiles and other energy-efficient appliances and materials. For people who have any money left over after paying their fuel and electricity bills, those tax credits will surely encourage wiser purchases. Whether they will make any difference in our thirst for Saudi and Iraqi oil remains very much in doubt.

Sadly, we have observed this simulation of action on various earlier occasions: the logrolling, subsidizing and pampering of the energy industries, combined with incremental and mostly insignificant gestures toward renewable sources and conservation. We have also seen the obstinate rejection of higher auto fuel-efficiency standards, the mindless refusal to make sufficient investments in future technologies, and the generally stupid insistence on business as usual.

We know that the “energy bill” won’t work, because the same approach hasn’t worked before. What should be done instead is scarcely mysterious.

Among the most disappointing aspects of the 2004 Presidential election was John Kerry’s decision to abandon the visionary theme he articulated early in his campaign: our need for an “Apollo project” to create the new industries that would begin the world’s energy transition. The Massachusetts Senator was able to speak on those issues with unusual inspiration, clarity and urgency. There is no figure in either party who has since dared to talk frankly about the stark choices that our industrial civilization can no longer avoid.

From the beginning of the first “energy crisis” during the 1970’s, we have known that conservation is the most realistic alternative to ever-increasing oil prices and ever-greater dependence on dubious client regimes. After that episode, Americans sought to save energy in their cars and homes and factories, with considerable success, until oil prices temporarily declined.

We remain far from achieving the efficiencies of other developed countries. But if we are to sustain our society and avoid economic and environmental disaster, we will eventually have to do more with less—or expect war, scarcity and ecological decline to define our future.

With serious federal investment and real political will, an energy policy focused on conservation and new technologies could provide millions of jobs, revive heartland industries, reduce pollution and liberate our foreign policy. Americans are still waiting to hear from a leader with that much imagination and courage.

"Everything."

"Everything? The Navajo rugs? The piano? All the antiques? They're worth a fortune, you know."

"I've got it all, Mother. Don't worry," I said in my most reassuring tone.

That I had crammed the entire contents of the 90-foot-long house we'd occupied since 1959 into my 800-square-foot Manhattan apartment was the biggest lie I'd told my mother since I was a teenager. And her unquestioning acceptance was symptomatic of the incipient dementia that made it necessary.

Everybody dreads dismantling the family household when a parent dies or is incapacitated, and managing the assorted anxieties-childhood memories, intimations of mortality, sibling rivalry, unfinished business-this rite of passage generates.

New Yorkers, however, have an especially hard time going through the stuff because most of us have no place to put it. Apartment dwellers lack the luxury of basements, attics, garages or spare bedrooms where we could stash the stuff, undigested, for the rest of our lives if we wanted to, like they can in the suburbs; we've got to make choices. Here's how I did it, and some rules I formulated as a result.

To go through the stuff, you have to go home again, to the physical and psychological place you came from and, in my case, fled in the Johnson administration. Even if your parents have moved out of the house you knew, they have taken your past with them; they embody it. Simply handling the detritus of childhood floods you with memories. The objects fairly hum with associations. (Rule No. 1: It's never just about the stuff.)

A gigantic task awaited me, and since I'd already sold the house my parents had designed and built, I had limited time to do it. My mother had vast and intriguing collections of all kinds of things, and I had inherited the gene; my husband and I have kilims on the ceiling, having long ago run out of floor space. She had also deposited everything she'd inherited from her own family and my father in the house's many recesses, where it had slumbered for decades. There were musical instruments, platform shoes, home movies, Chinese lamps and tureens, tribal masks, my least-favorite aunt's furniture, my father's medical textbooks. What was I going to do with it all? And the more difficult question: What did I really want to keep? (Rule No. 2: Expect to be overwhelmed.)

I commandeered my husband and a dear friend to fly home with me for three weekends, to serve as witnesses and packers. (Rule No. 3: Help-especially extra-familial-really helps.) First we took photographs of all the rooms, so I would remember the stuff's natural habitat. Then we sorted it into three categories (Keep, Leave, Donate). I saw, showed and bid farewell to my report cards, high-school yearbooks, the mosaic trivet I'd made in arts and crafts at camp, snapshots of long-dead relatives I'd never met. I discarded love letters from forgotten admirers and souvenirs from forgotten vacations-the wooden Dutch shoes from Holland, Mich., inscribed with my name among them.

Having two kindred spirits to appreciate, to be amused or touched by the stuff from my past and my family's set it in my memory and allowed me to leave it behind. I was gratified that my friend so loved the house that he would have bought it furnished if it had been in New Jersey, and that my husband was proud of the report cards.

Ironically, it would be a homecoming of sorts for most of the stuff I decided to take, since it had come from New York in the first place. Throughout my childhood, we made yearly pilgrimages here to shop. It felt practically sacrilegious to think of owning, let alone wearing, the glimmering earrings shaped like snails, leaves, chains and roses I had "helped" her select at Tiffany years ago. Their velvet-lined boxes, once as glamorous as their contents, were matted and frayed now, and everything was smaller than I remembered. The stores where many of her accessories came from, once the epitome of style-Mark Cross, Bonwit Teller-were long gone. (Rule No. 4: Memento mori is inevitable when you do this.)

So what did I take? All six Navajo rugs, as promised; they formed an immediate alliance with the kilims. Some quirky decorative objects (an old hat mold, a Currier and Ives print of The Wonderful Albino Family) fit right in. The Sunkist juicer should last another 50 years, and I like the Russel Wright and Fiesta dishes much better now than when I ate off them in the 50's. (Rule No. 5: Sometimes you become more like your mother later in life.)

We found a (now-)fashionably frayed, hand-tooled leather belt with a sterling buckle that my father had bought in New Mexico for a pittance decades before Ralph Lauren discovered them, another belt of pre-endangered crocodile, and a few vintage ties that seemed stylish rather than dated. I love to see my husband wear them. (Rule No. 6: Continuity counts.)

The letters I'd written home-my parents had kept every one-I brought back, organized by date, read and burned, not to suppress their content, but as a funeral rite. (Rule No. 7: Rituals help you process the past.)

There were some surprises. Even though my mother and I share a dress size and shoe size, most of her things didn't fit me or flatter me. (Rule No. 8: You're not your mother, after all.) And I don't favor matching purses, gloves and pumps with every outfit. These went to my favorite thrift shop on Third Avenue (better than selling them, I figured), where, the grateful manager told me, they graced the window for a week and fetched a tidy sum. I'm glad I donated them, and glad I didn't see them there. (Rule No. 9: Say goodbye and don't look back.)

Although I was determined to take nothing I didn't like or couldn't use, there were some things I couldn't leave behind. I couldn't imagine wearing her rope of plump pink pearls, but they were her signature. (Rule No. 10: Don't stick obsessively to your rules.) They lay in my drawer for a year, until one day I realized I could convert them into a pair of tasseled earrings just my style. (Rule No. 11: Integration takes time.)

I wept a little when we drove away from the house for the last time, then breathed a sigh of relief. The rental van we drove back carried only a few boxes for me. The rest was for friends, since I don't have children to save it for. I felt like Santa Claus. The Wedgwood service for 17 (one whole place setting had been broken), the crystal and two sets of sterling flatware services for 12-too formal for my taste-went to a woman with a brownstone on the West Side; the Danish-modern barware and high-50's accessories to a gay man with a mid-century ranch in the Hamptons; the art books, linens, sculpture and occasional furniture to my loyal packer.

I visit the stuff sometimes, although it does feel strange to see other people using and displaying it differently than we did. It was gratifying to give things to my friends while I lived to enjoy their delight (Rule No. 12: Be glad that you can't take it with you.)

What I kept, I love; it feels like both mine and my mother's now.

She died painlessly right before the New Year began, retaining her sense of style to the end: I'm wearing the Japanese sarong pants and the long, beaded earrings that I gave her for her last birthday as I write this.

It would take total genius to make a play about a gorilla work. What odds for Prymate ? Remember to name the producers.

It was originally produced by Florida State University School of Theater, Tallahassee, Florida.

Prymate is misspelt. Unless intended as a pun. Prying mate? It makes no sense.

The gorilla is named Graham. Dullish name for a gorilla. Think of Jane Goodall and her famous chimp, Fifi, mother of Freud and Frodo.

Graham is played by André De Shields. There's controversy about a black actor playing a gorilla. Why didn't they cast a white actor?

De Shields is a beloved performer in musicals. ( Ain't Misbehavin' , The Wiz .) What's he doing in this? Believes in role. Look up interview in Times about him studying with gorilla behavior specialist to prepare for role.

Truism: All actors have to believe in the roles they play. If not, they can't act them. Same for plays. I never met an actor who didn't love the play he's acting in.

Relief De Shields doesn't wear gorilla outfit. Appears in shorts and baggy T-shirt. Keeps dignity somehow. Close call during masturbation scene. Graham-an aging gorilla, uses inhaler when over-exerted. Emphysema? Walks on all fours. Hoots. When upset, hugs little dolly. Dolly looks like miniature ape.

Graham has been taught rudimentary sign language by deaf-mute anthropologist, Esther, played by deaf actress Phyllis Frelich. Esther, late middle age, has run off with him to New Mexico wilderness. She's fleeing husband-Dr. Avrum Belasco, 59, two-time Nobel nominee, evil experimenter on apes. Wants to save Graham from evil Avrum. Sees him as her "moral and maternal responsibility."

Maternal? Who will believe her line, "I left because you wanted to kill my child!"?

Opening scene: Gorilla perched on cardboard mountain in New Mexico. Esther busy in cabin below. Thunder. Graham descends hooting. Dances and jives with Esther. Trouble breathing. Inhaler needed.

Avrum suddenly turns up with young, blond sign interpreter, Allison Alexkovsky-Wilcox, to repossess Graham and take him back to the ape lab for research into cure for AIDS. Avrum played by two-time Tony winner James Naughton, who looks stunned throughout. Has to say the line: "Mrs. Wilcox, there may be a difference between chimps and gorillas. There are over three billion nucleotides in the primate genome. My predecessors have missed something that I intend to find through gene sequencing."

Allison is played by soap star Heather Tom. Gorilla fancies Allison. So does Avrum. Trouble ahead.

Avrum and wife obviously hate each other. Passionate love scene between them makes no sense. The spark Is Still There!

Peculiar jokes about labia rings, codpieces, sucking toes, jerking off, crotch-sniffing. "Serious" play; Borscht Belt.

ESTHER: What did he tell you about me?

ALLISON: That you're a famous linguist-anthropologist.

ESTHER: Or a cunning-linguist-anthropologist ….

Esther is meant to be feisty and independent. But she's merely flighty and vulgar. Phyllis Frelich overacts. Nobody onstage reveals an inner life or even intelligence-except in glimmers, the gorilla. Coarseness is the play's tone. Dr. Avrum complains semi-comically about his weak bladder, severe arthritis, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and "testosterone deficiency". It's meant to make him appealing. To whom?

Esther refers to gorilla as a "hot dude" who likes to "hump-hump-hump." While she's busy preparing supper, Graham pees on Allison and forces her to masturbate him. Ape rapes blonde.

Allison doesn't seem too upset. Announces she led promiscuous life with ex-husband.

Issues in play: Should scientific experiments on primates have limits? Are gorillas a lower species or do they have feelings? Has humanity progressed? Aren't we all just animals really? And how are you today?

Sample dialogue between battling Avrum and Esther:

"What are we, savages?"

"Who knows where his mouth has been?"

"You're not God! You're just an evil human being!"

"This obsessive affection you have for him is a non-casual psychosis!"

"Is this you? Is this you who was under the skin of the person who lay inside me all those nights?"

"Sweetheart, I am this close [to] mapping the genetic code of a dozen primate phyla."

"You were inhaling me, swallowing me whole. All I could think about was my crotch."

"I should have told a lot of guys off instead of sucking them off."

"We can't all be as purely driven as you, enhancing communication among people who would be otherwise incommunicado …. "

It turns out that Allison is H.I.V.-positive. ("So delicate. Life. So, so, delicate," she says). Also, Avrum secretly infected Graham with the AIDS virus back at the lab.

Graham tries to drown Avrum in nearby river.

He survives to be revived by Allison straddling him in bra and panties. "Put your hands on me. I'm the fire."

He resists. But not before she bites him on his lip to infect him with the AIDS virus in revenge for what he did to Graham. Avrum doesn't seem particularly disturbed by this. In a happy end, sort of, he immediately reconciles with Esther for absolutely no reason. They decide to return to the lab with Graham. I wouldn't go with them if I were him.

There's a final sunrise tableaux of Avrum, Esther and a gorilla looking very thoughtful. As well they should. Allison can be seen prowling around on the cardboard mountain above. She seems to have become a primate.

And … curtain!

Dear Diary,

Fuck you.

Sorry, I didn't mean that. I meant, fuck them all. Fuck Kerry and Chris Matthews and Jodi Wilgoren and Mike Barnicle.

So my Iowa speech is the Paris Hilton tape of the new year.

Big fuckin' deal. I watched the tape. I don't think I looked so crazy. Why did Chris Matthews say my shirt was rolled up tight as a tourniquet? What's that supposed to mean? Fuck him! Oh, gotta quit it. I'm a doctor. Doctor, doctor, doctor. Bedside manner. Gotta stay calm. I've tried to keep the lid on-I tried to spin my reluctance to talk about my life story as a dignity thing, a "strong, silent type" thing-but I know how the New York press sees it: rich Park Avenue kid couldn't hack it in New York, carpetbagged in Vermont, got a fuckin' bike path built, named governor when the real gov died, decided he could be President …. Fuck them! Oh, and lest we forget: wife hates him , Just have a look at her puss in that Times profile last week. Thanks a whole fuck of a lot, dear.

So: fuck 'em all. Fuck South Carolina. Fuck Arizona. Fuck North Dakota. Fuck New Mexico. Fuck California. Fuck Texas. Fuck New York. Fuck South Dakota. Fuck New Mexico. Double-fuck Oregon. Fuck Oklahoma. Fuck Massachusetts. Fuck Delaware. Fuck Michigan. Fuck Ohio. Fuck Missouri. Fuck North Carolina.

Did I leave anybody out?

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!

Fuck all the slackers who support me-get jobs, you morons.

Fuck you, John Kerry-you smug prick. Your fancy hair and condiment-heiress wife won't get you to the White House, you're 57 varieties of bozo, you bozo. Oh, wait, I forgot-you're a war hero. Big fuckin' deal. And fuck you, John Edwards, you pretty-boy pansy. "Two Americas," my ass. You think you're so fucking cute. And fuck you, Dick Gephardt-the voters hated you in 1988 and now you're going home to St. Louis. And fuck you, General Clark and Joe Lieberman, and fuck you, Al Sharpton. Actually, I kind of like Al Sharpton.

But fuck him, anyway.

Fuck fuck fuck fuckety-fuck-fuck fuck.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRHHHHHH!!!!!!!!

Oh, and fuck the Internet.

Boy, I would have done great in a debate with Bush. I could have told him to go fuck himself.

Girl With a Pearl

Earring

So, fellas, you're sitting there with your honey, maybe it's a Friday night when neither of you has any energy left from the week to go out, and so one of you sort of suggests, "Hey, let's watch some, you know …. " And so you grab the DVD or you order up some pay-per-view and things get a little hot and well, you can't help but notice-hey, porn is not nuanced-that 99 percent of the time the men in the porn flick climax, they do so on the woman's face. And the women seem to love it, but hey, you're no dope. These are actresses ….

But there's something about "the facial," as it's called in the porn lexicon, which appeals to you, but it also seems just so … well, un-P.C. Does that word "facial"-think $100 facials at Bliss-mean something deeper? Then you realize you're starting to sound like Sarah Jessica Parker on Sex and the City and if you keep this up, you'll have to blow your brains out to retain a shred of dignity.

I headed out into the dark night.

At the 50th-birthday party for New York Post Page Six impresario Richard Johnson, I asked the birthday boy whether the facial had become part of Manhattan's sexual repertoire.

"Most women don't even like it on their back, " Mr. Johnson said.

"I think it brings you closer together," said model and Men's Health columnist Kathryn Eisman, before adding: "It's never happened to me."

"I don't like to discuss my personal life on a tape recorder," said former Barneys exec Gene Pressman. "My thought is that sex is always mutual."

Christine, his girlfriend of six years, was next to him.

"I'm in the beauty industry," she said. "I'm a part owner of a spa, and it's very good for your skin."

Actress Rose McGowan, who has heated up plenty a movie screen and dated rocker Marilyn Manson, claimed that she'd never watched a porno in her life.

"It's not my aesthetic of beauty," she said.

"I only like to make love, " said model-agency owner Paolo Zampoli.

Two nights later, I bumped into Saturday Night Live's Jimmy Fallon.

"I think Dexy's Midnight Runners were a little out of line to come on Eileen," he cracked. "Too-rah-loo-rah-yaaay!"

Nearby I saw one of the first girls I'd ever had sex with, in the late 1980's. At the time, even to give a "pearl necklace" was an anti-feminist act. I wouldn't have dared.

"I have experienced it many times," said my lady friend, now 34, of the facial. "Ten years ago, I would have felt ripped off. I'm older now. You know, it depends on who it is. Not degrading-it's an indulgence. It's been happening to me lately, because I've been interested in his doing that to me, and it is part of the whole experience. It's mutually hot. It starts in the face, then you move it to the chest, and then you rub it all around and everybody's happy."

The next morning I called Candida Royalle, an ex-porn actress turned porn director.

"It's something that's becoming less taboo for women," she said. "I got an e-mail from some young gal a few weeks ago saying some views expressed on my Web site were too conservative. She said, 'Oh, I love facials!' A lot more young women are watching mainstream porn-couples together-and I think there's a place for everything. My only gripe against it was that it was in every single adult movie you saw. It was overdone, and sometimes in the context of a sort of degrading feeling to the movie. But, you know, sometimes it's good, nasty fun.

"I think that no one talks about the shame and guilt about sex that boys grow up with," she continued. "It's like, 'Well, girls just have to put them at bay, but we know that boys and men have these base urges.' And no one talks about what kind of attitude this develops in a man about his sexuality. There's things that boys grow up with that don't make them feel particularly good about themselves, and one of them is about their ejaculate: how a girl doesn't want to swallow and thinks it's icky and disgusting. So what is the best revenge a guy can have on a woman? You know: 'I'm gonna come on your face .' So I think it's a form of revenge. And maybe it's not always a mean thing. Maybe it's the ultimate acceptance of something that boys are grown up to think is so offensive and distasteful."

And from the woman's point of view?

"I think it goes along with the taking back of the word 'slut,'" Ms. Royalle said. "You could always kind of keep a woman down and afraid of her own sexual power by using certain terms on her: 'Oh, you're a slut .' That would make a woman cringe-'I don't want to be a slut!' So you'd avoid doing anything that might get you called a slut. Well, the reverse psychologically would be to look it in the face and say, 'Yeah, I'm a slut. So what? Fuck you.' It disempowers the whole energy of it. So it's like, 'Sure, you want to come in my face? I don't care. I'm not even going to feel degraded by it.'

"It's also a way to play with the thrill of violation," she added. "Those of us who are really sexual probably have guilt and shame, and one way to deal with it is to act out on it. It's like, 'Go ahead, violate me. I even like it.' It's sort of getting control back over the situation."

However, she said, "I think it's fun and exciting if you really find it fun and exciting-not if you're just trying to accommodate someone and you're trying to convince yourself that it's O.K."

I rang Dian Hanson, the "sexy book editor" at Taschen Books, to get her take.

"Men love their own semen," she said. "Men judge their virility by the quantities of semen …. They want to revel in what they can produce."

That night, I went to the Cowgirl Hall of Fame on Hudson Street and chatted up three young ladies who work in fashion.

"I did a lot in high school-that was actually my most sexually active time," said one, a 23-year-old from Greenwich, Conn. "I was seeing this guy, and he would ask me lots of things: 'Can I do this? Can I do this?' Actually, he wouldn't ask-he would just do it. He peed on me once in the shower."

She said he also ejaculated on her face once.

"I was like, 'What ever , you want to try this,'" she said. "And then: 'Can I wipe it off now? Are you done ?'"

Her friend Bonnie said it had happened to her, too, but by accident.

"It's extremely taboo," she said. "I actually think about this a lot. I think it's really aggressive and exploitative …. I can handle it, but it's not something I'd want in my face or my hair or my eye. It's sort of spitting in your face or something. The face is-it's your face . There is something kind of violent about it."

My next stop was the Lakeside Lounge. I met a woman named Storm, a 25-year-old brunette who said she works at a nightclub. Storm said that while anal sex could be pleasurable for both parties, she didn't see the benefits of having a man ejaculate on her face.

"It's a porn thing, the final humiliation," she said. "So there's nothing fun in it for me. It's kind of like a slap in the face-nothing intimate about it. It's kind of rude."

I asked for her name, age and occupation.

"Wow, we're getting very personal now-why don't you just come in my face?"

Next to her was her "independently wealthy" friend, Kate, who said that even if she was in love, she would not let a man do it. "It just grosses me out," she said. "What if it stings my eyes and I'm like, 'Oh my God!' Maybe the guy gets off, like, 'Oh yeah, here comes my wad-and it's going all over your face!' But the girl's like, 'Oh, great-now I have this sticky, awful shit on my face, so I need to go wash my face now.'"

Dorothy's is a gay bar on Ninth Avenue, where there's never a shortage of heterosexual women. I met Mary Beth Quirk, a 22-year-old student and aspiring journalist who was drinking a vodka cranberry.

"I'm a virgin!" she said. But she said she was familiar with the pearl necklace and agreed that in porn, women seemed to enjoy the facials.

"It looks like a fountain of candy," she said. "If it happened to me, I'd probably be a little shocked and surprised, but I'd slap him in the face and go, 'Oh, that was kind of funny!' I mean, I'd get over it."

Next I found Liz, a 30-year-old TV news anchor on the West Coast who was in town.

"It blows-literally," she said. "I have to say I've done it once, and it's only because I saw it in porn and I said to a guy, 'You know what? Do you want to come in my face?' And he was shocked. Thank God, he's now my husband."

Sitting nearby was a heavyset badass named Tuggy Jones, a 30-year-old who works on a porn site.

"Of course I've done it," he said. "There's a primal male response. It's like a gut feeling-it's just incredibly hot. It totally comes right out of porn, absolutely. It's like the chicken-and-egg thing. They put it in there, I guess, because they think that people think it's hot, and then people think it's hot because they see it in porn."

I woke up groggy the next day, thinking about another girl from college. She'd been the first woman I'd dated who suggested that we try anal sex. I called and asked her about the facial idea. There was a long pause.

"I think it's disgusting," she said. "It's repulsive. You can do all the fun and crazy stuff you want, but don't come in my face. It's disrespectful. It's gross. That's where I draw the line-right there."

Finally, I worked up the nerve to ask my present girlfriend.

"Maybe on Valentine's Day," she said.

-George Gurley

Unlike Al Gore, Mr. Bush has escaped the assumption that anything he asserts is probably false (although it may well be incomprehensible). Rarely is any claim that the Texas governor makes about himself or his achievements subjected to the harsh parsing so routinely applied to the Vice President's remarks.

The superficial journalistic examination of the Republican nominee has permitted him wide latitude to re-invent himself whenever convenient as a "compassionate conservative," a "reformer with results" and, most recently, as someone with "real plans for real people." These smart slogans may or may not render Mr. Bush more marketable-a topic that excites hours of discussion among pundits and analysts-but what basis do they have in reality? Unfortunately, any and all pertinent facts must be excavated from an intellectual landfill of campaign reportage.

Fortunately, an organization called Texans for Public Justice recently released a report called the State of the Lone Star State: How Life in Texas Measures Up. T.P.J., as it is known among Austin pols, is a liberal-leaning but scrupulously nonpartisan outfit that roasts Democrats and Republicans alike for their subservience to special interests and their abuses of the people's trust. Their new compilation of 150 "indicators" of the quality of life in their home state is not explicitly intended as a measurement of Mr. Bush's record. "The Texas-sized problems presented here are the bipartisan byproducts of a working majority of Texas politicians burying their heads in the sand for decades," as the introduction notes. "Governor George W. Bush did not create these problems-nor did he take major steps to solve them."

That is a kindly understatement. Citing specific and timely data, the study shows where Texas ranks among the states on a wide variety of social, economic and environmental issues-and the results aren't flattering.

It is hard to understand, for example, how Mr. Bush can proclaim himself "proud" of his environmental record when his state ranks first or second in nearly every measure of air, water and toxic degradation. Texas is No. 1 in toxic and cancerous manufacturing emissions, toxic air and water emissions, carbon dioxide emissions and animal manure dumped in its waterways; it ranks second in ozone pollution exposure, cancerous water pollution and hazardous chemical spills. Many of these statistics may be explained by the state's enormous petrochemical and agricultural industries, but the governor has eased rather than tightened regulation of the polluters. On his watch, Houston surpassed Los Angeles as the smoggiest municipality in the nation. And his state currently ranks 49th in per-capita spending on water quality. The "voluntary" approach he favors in curbing industrial filth doesn't seem to be working.

The wealth accumulated by Texas industrialists is lavished on Mr. Bush's campaign treasury, but little seems to be devoted to the "compassionate" purposes with which he says he identifies. His state ranks first in adults without health insurance, second in poor children without health insurance and in children without immunization. Despite the governor's professed concern for the unborn, those still in the womb don't necessarily fare too well, either; only four states provided less prenatal care than Texas.

The rates of malnutrition are high, too. Only New Mexico and Mississippi did worse, and only Oregon has a larger percentage of people going hungry. Meanwhile, funding for food stamps in Texas declined precipitously as a result of welfare "reform." Spending on public health there was among the lowest in the nation, and the poor in Texas were among the least likely to receive Medicaid benefits-because the state government hasn't spent a dime in federal funds to ensure that eligible families are enrolled.

By now everyone knows that Texas is No. 1 in capital punishment. It also boasts the highest percentage of adults incarcerated. These numbers may bear some relationship to the fact that-regardless of Mr. Bush's vaunted commitment to "leave no child behind"-his state graduates students from high school at a rate worse than 44 other states and suffers more dropouts than all but four states. (Elementary-level pupils are doing somewhat better, but the T.P.J. study and others have noted that those improvements owe less to Mr. Bush's endeavors than to a decade of reforms before he took office.)

Amid dozens of appalling statistics, there is one that helps explain the governor's political success: Texas has the fourth-lowest rate of voter registration anywhere.