February 9, 2008

• Dental Vacation,Lost and Found New York City,BMWStorm, Open Marriage,Today’s Papers

  More Fun Than Root Canals? It’s the Dental Vacation

  Courtesy of the Gates family VIVA MEXICO Tyler Gates at a dental clinic in Mexico. Courtesy of the Gates family Scott, Tyler and Jennifer taking advantage of the vacation portion of the trip to sample some of Mexico’s other amenities. February 7, 2008 Skin Deep More Fun Than Root Canals? It’s the Dental Vacation By CAMILLE SWEENEY JENNIFER GATES, 40, a hairstylist and makeup artist from Northern California, hadn’t seen a dentist in a decade when she got the call last spring. Her father, Jerry Halley, 64, phoned to say he desperately needed crowns for a few back teeth and other work. Without insurance, Mr. Halley, who owns a landscaping business in Oregon, would have to pay the estimated $8,000 bill. “We all needed quality dental care, fast,” said Ms. Gates, whose own dental-work estimate was $20,000 and whose immediate family was also uninsured. “So, I started planning.” Ms. Gates found a reputable dentist through friends of her parents who had traveled to Mexico for care. Six weeks later, Ms. Gates flew to join her parents for a week of massages and tanning in San José del Cabo, Mexico, punctuated, in her case, by daily visits to Dr. Rosa Peña for five procedures including a root canal. In the last year, Ms. Gates, who had a tooth so deteriorated she could touch its nerve with her tongue, has returned with her parents, husband and 14-year-old son to scuba dive and to open wide for Dr. Peña. Her 20-year-old daughter and son-in-law also have made a trip. All told Ms. Gates’s extended clan has had 12 crowns, 6 dental veneers, 4 root canals, over half a dozen fillings, 6 whitening treatments and 2 broken teeth fixed at a savings, they say, of tens of thousands of dollars. “Dr. Rosy is now our family dentist,” Ms. Gates said. Perhaps this is not everyone’s idea of a worry-free family getaway. Nevertheless, for at least two decades, medical tourism has been an increasingly popular alternative for the uninsured desperate for care, and for middle-class Americans willing to travel to secure affordable health care. Roughly half a million Americans sought medical care abroad in 2006, of which 40 percent were dental tourists, according to the National Coalition on Health Care, an alliance of more than 70 organizations. That’s up from an estimated 150,000 in 2004, said Renee-Marie Stephano, the chief operating officer for the Medical Tourism Association, a nonprofit organization that researches global health care. Dental bridges and bonding ranked No. 1 and 2 on a list of most sought-after procedures for Americans traveling abroad for medical care, according to a report just published by HealthCare Tourism International, a nonprofit group that tracks health care. In the latest twist on this trend, families are traveling abroad together, turning an annual vacation into a cost-effective checkup for the brood. Two reasons are at play, according to industry experts: a higher demand for elective dental care like bonding and veneers, and second, the growing number of medical travel agents who vouch for the foreign doctors they recommend. Agents help patients choose between sightseeing-cum-dental packages from Hungary to Mexico and can even arrange a foreign baby sitter for parents in need of fillings. “You can see where this could be a perfect opportunity to incorporate dental care — not typically treatment that will leave you bed-bound — and a family tour of a new country,” Ms. Stephano said. There are 75 medical travel agents based in the United States, she estimated, a number she suggested will double by the end of this year. To allay new customers’ fears, many dentists abroad, some of whom have trained in the United States and use the same equipment as American dentists, rely heavily on word of mouth from satisfied customers. Their Web sites include testimonials, and stateside references are provided. Although the American Dental Association has no official warning against foreign travel for dental care, a spokesman, Dr. Edmond Hewlett, said, “Dentists abroad are not held to the same standards as in the U.S.” “Teeth are not just appliances,” added Dr. Hewlett, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Dentistry. “They’re not like a car you take in for an annual tune-up. Your oral health affects your general health and vice versa.” There are two main groups of family-oriented dental travelers, said Neil Patel, the founder of HealthCare Tourism International. Immigrants have long returned to their countries of origin for dental and medical care and to spend time with relatives. But now there’s a more recent wave of patients, interested in taking their families to a far-flung location to make the best out of what is essentially a rather unpleasant chore. “Call it multitasking, if you will,” said Mr. Patel, who added that he was also seeing improvements in risk management, the transfer of medical records and translator services. Sometimes patients take relatives along to nurse them (if they need it) and to city-hop with them (if they don’t). That was the case when Robert Mucci, 55, a utilities manager from Valley Stream, N.Y., contacted Dental-Offer, a dental tourism agency, to book a trip to Mosonmagyarovar, Hungary, a hot spot for tooth travel. “I had no idea how I was going to feel, and I wanted to have my family with me as a support system,” said Mr. Mucci, who had several teeth extracted, bone grafting and implants. “It turned out the pain was totally manageable,” said Mr. Mucci, who went with his wife, 24-year-old daughter and 8-year-old son. He still paid a third of what he was told he would have to pay at home, and that included flights. And, since the work was done in less time than he was told it would take at home, he had plenty of time to sight-see in Vienna, Bratislava and Prague. Most medical tourism agencies do not specialize in tooth travel for families, but it is fast becoming a staple of their business. Just a year ago, Steve Gallegos, a retired Army lieutenant colonel who used to coordinate health care for military families abroad, opened Medcentrek, a medical tourism agency in San Antonio. He has already had dozens of requests for family dental travel. “We make recommendations not only on the health care end, but also where to stay, what to do, parasailing, deep-sea fishing, you name it,” Mr. Gallegos said. “As people get comfortable with the idea, this kind of family dental vacation could become an annual thing.” In years past, the farthest that Leona Denison, 30, a cosmetologist from Albuquerque, usually went for a getaway was Arizona. This year, her family of four went to Costa Rica, where she got nine dental implants and three crowns. “It took a lot of coaxing on my part to get my husband to agree, but Medcentrek helped with all the arrangements,” Ms. Denison said. “We saw waterfalls and volcanoes. My husband went rafting. Being from New Mexico, my girls really loved the ocean.” Even with travel expenses, she paid $6,000 less than the $21,000 price a local dentist had quoted for the work. Remarkably, some patients argue that a flight and a few hours in the dental chair is less hassle than having to rush back to the office half-sedated. For others, turning a trip to the dentist into a family vacation takes their mind off pending procedures. Lori Sullivan, 43, an administrative assistant in a home health care agency in Port Angeles, Wash., admits that she fears dentists. Last spring, when she found out she would need an expensive root canal, she decided to book a diverting trip with her 8-year-old daughter to Tijuana, Mexico, through PlanetHospital, a medical tourism agency based in Los Angeles. “I had heard of this, but had never considered it an option,” Ms. Sullivan said. “Then, I did my research. The procedure went fine and the price was right.” Her agency hired a baby sitter for her daughter during her root canal, and, she said, they “even arranged to have us driven down to Baja one day where we had lobster and walked along the beach. It was a long weekend we’ll never forget.” She added: “Now, I’m saving up to go back for veneers. My daughter can’t wait.” Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

   

  His City, Lost and Found Modern New York City

  

  Michael Nagle for The New York Times

  

  Dima Gavrysh/Associated Press

  February 3, 2008

  His City, Lost and Found

  By NATHANIEL RICH

  I RECENTLY went into Manhattan with a friend to visit her younger brother’s new apartment on 52nd Street and the East River. The brother, Ariel, had just graduated from college and had been hired by a prestigious financial firm in Midtown. His two roommates had followed the same path, and so, apparently, had everyone else who lived on their long, fluorescent-lit hallway on the 32nd floor.

  There was a good reason for this. As Ariel explained to me, his firm had negotiated a deal with the building’s real estate agents, and every employee who rented an apartment got a 6 percent discount on the brokerage fee. Each weekend, and especially over the summer, the young bankers moved in, while families and elderly people moved out.

  The apartment building next door, meanwhile, was filling up with lawyers. Doctors lived in a third building, the one closest to the river. “It’s like special-interest housing, but for professionals,” Ariel said.

  It was Friday night and Ariel’s hallway was busy with pre-party chatter. One guy no one had ever seen before knocked on the door, inviting us to a party on the next floor. An hour later, two women showed up asking whether we ourselves were having a party.

  Ariel and his roommates were elated. They finally had their own place, and one within walking distance of work. Everyone else on their hall was young, friendly and new to the city. It was like freshman year again.

  The neighborhood’s transformation seemed stark and total. It was as if a new city had erupted overnight, devouring the old one in a panic of hunger. The suddenness of the change came as a surprise to me, because I thought I knew this particular corner of the city pretty well. After all, I grew up there — on East 51st Street, one block from Ariel’s apartment.

  Later, walking west on 52nd Street, I recognized a grim sushi restaurant on First Avenue. I had never seen anyone eat there, but that night a line of recent college graduates extended out the front door and down the block. The people standing in line probably weren’t aware that just a decade ago, the luxury high-rise behind them, on the corner of 51st and First, had been a shelter for homeless and mentally ill women.

  Nor is it likely that the throngs on Second Avenue realized that the glossy nightclubs had just a few years ago replaced a row of moribund pizza and taco joints; or that, in the 1970s and ’80s, this was one of the city’s most widely known gay hustling districts, the inspiration for the Ramones‘ “53rd and 3rd.” (“53rd and 3rd/ Standing on the street/ 53rd and 3rd/ I’m trying to turn a trick.”)

  I was born in 1980, so my view of the changes that have come to Manhattan is relatively limited. I can’t credibly mourn the transformation of the Lower East Side from a wanton, crack-depleted borderland filled with burning trash cans and random knifings into a slick paradise of Avenue C wine bars and Ludlow Street fashion boutiques. I have vivid memories of 1980s Times Square (my parents worked in offices there), but I never got to experience the distinct pleasures of all-night grind-house double features or live sex shows.

  I certainly don’t remember the Greenwich Village of the 1950s, or the Bowery of the punk era, or Jean-Michel Basquiat’s SoHo, though I’d like to imagine that I passed through the latter, at least in a stroller.

  I do remember going to the 24-hour French diner Florent in the meatpacking district in the late ’80s, when its pink neon marquee was the only commercial storefront visible in any direction. It was after a dinner there, as my parents searched for a cab, that I saw my first real-life prostitute (also my first real-life transvestite).

  Florent is still holding on, but these days it’s hard to spot. As the Web site of the new Hotel Gansevoort describes the neighborhood, it is now an “eclectic mix of meat warehouses and retrofit storefronts.”

  On Gansevoort Street, as well as on West 42nd Street, and to an ever greater extent in Chelsea and Hell’s Kitchen and around Columbus Circle, it’s impossible for someone like me, born and raised in Manhattan, not to feel like a tourist. Not because these parts of the city feel like a foreign country; just the opposite. From the billboard advertisements to the neon marquees to the new streamlined architecture, Manhattan has embraced the dominant gestures and exclamations of American mall culture.

  WHEN tourists gaze up at the lights on 42nd Street, they see themselves, and their own towns and cities, but as if through the wrong end of a telescope, the images having suffered some kind of grotesque magnification. I’m not any less in awe myself; I look up, too, mesmerized by the lights.

  This used to disturb me, so I understand why there’s been a lot of hand-wringing in the past few years about the transformation of Manhattan, particularly over the loss of what some call the city’s bohemian spirit.

  In an essay in The New Yorker last year called “Gothamitis,” Adam Gopnik wrote, “New York is safer and richer but less like itself, an old lover who has gone for a face-lift and come out looking like no one in particular.” Inigo Thomas, writing in Slate in 2005, began a week of columns about the history of the city’s bohemian past by declaring, “There is no bohemia in today’s New York.”

  New York magazine and Time Out New York regularly run articles about new neighborhoods that promise to be the next frontier of New York cool, now that Manhattan has priced out all artists, youth, ethnic communities and nonbankers (“If You Lived Here, You’d Be Cool by Now” was the title of an article in New York extolling the hipster virtues of Jersey City).

  Most of the points made in these reports are valid. Yet the articles often seem plagued by an easily discernible peevishness, irritation and even depression over the way Manhattan has changed. There is also, on the part of those displaced to the poor boroughs, an element of competitive bristling. It’s as if Manhattan has to be disgraced and humiliated for any other borough to gain ascendancy.

  I OFTEN wonder whether the worst of this griping comes not from native New Yorkers but from people who didn’t grow up here, the same people who, when they arrived, made immense financial, psychological and physical sacrifices to land a bunk bed in an apartment in Hell’s Kitchen. They did it because in their minds, Manhattan was synonymous with the big city.

  This is the class of people who moved to New York believing that if they didn’t live on the main island, they might as well have stayed in Pasadena, or Raleigh, or even Jersey City. These are the same people who, after enduring a year of Manhattan poverty, decide to move to Brooklyn, or even Queens, and then extravagantly praise the virtues of their new, down-market neighborhood while castigating their old, expensive one. In other words, they secretly wish they could still afford to live in Manhattan.

  I don’t share that desire, but for the first 21 years of my life I was no less of a Manhattan snob. My own internal map of the city was informed entirely by the subway map. I didn’t realize until an alarmingly late age that the map was not to scale but schematic (and highly Manhattan-centric). In other words, I didn’t know that Queens continued for another five miles after the end of the F line, or that the little green hexagon of Prospect Park was actually more than two-thirds the size of Central Park, or that Staten Island was almost three times as big as Manhattan (and was part of New York).

  In my teens, my own Saul Steinberg view of the city began at the southern end with the World Trade Center (where I used to go on tedious class trips in grade school) and jumped north to St. Marks Place (where I shopped for used records), then to a friend’s apartment in Stuyvesant Town, and finally, taking up the bulk of the frame, the swath that ran from Times Square up to 96th Street. (At the private high school I attended on the Upper East Side, my friends considered my apartment on 51st Street “downtown.”)

  In the outlying portions of my mental map of the city drifted the continents of Shea Stadium, Randalls Island and the Meadowlands. There was also a small island at East 116th Street where, when my family was stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic one summer night on the F.D.R. Drive, returning from a visit to some friends in the suburbs, a man threw a large rock through the window on the passenger side and stole my mother’s wallet. I was 9 at the time, sitting in the back seat with my younger brother. Glass flew all over the car, and my mother’s thigh was bleeding. I remember thinking that it was my first brush with the real New York.

  Ever since I moved to Brooklyn five years ago, first to Greenpoint and then to a 300-square-foot garret just south of Atlantic Avenue, I’ve had a new map of the city. (It’s a good thing, too; even metropolises can become claustrophobic.)

  Uptown has crept from the Upper East Side down to Union Square; the Upper West Side has moved to Brooklyn Heights (with Zabar’s morphing into Sahadi’s, the emporium of Middle Eastern food on Atlantic Avenue, and Citarella into Fish Tales on Court Street); the old Lower East Side to Red Hook, or perhaps Sunset Park; Battery Park to Brighton Beach; Midtown to Metrotech.

  And Central Park to Prospect Park. My brother, who has just moved to Brooklyn, went into Manhattan with some friends one recent weekend, to play touch football on the field behind the Metropolitan Museum’s Temple of Dendur, near 84th Street. It was a 40-minute commute, but they had always played football there as kids.

  Yet as soon as they took to the field a park security guard came by and asked them to leave. The park, it turns out, was trying to grow its grass, so park officials didn’t want anyone to step on it. After being kicked off four different fields, my brother and his friends headed back to the subway in a state of bewilderment.

  “The whole borough of Manhattan is a museum now,” he told me that night. “I like that there are fewer murders, but sometimes you want to play catch.”

  Brooklyn, of course, is changing, too, to no small degree driven by Manhattan. A luxury high-rise goes up on the Bowery, and a Richard Meier luxury apartment goes up in Prospect Heights. Rents skyrocket in Battery Park and then on Myrtle Avenue in Fort Greene.

  Fairway has opened in Red Hook; Trader Joe’s is coming to Cobble Hill. The construction of the Atlantic Yards development (and the destruction of the prewar residential buildings that now stand on its site) is under way. Neighborhoods like Brooklyn Heights, Park Slope and Fort Greene are nearly as expensive as several areas in lower Manhattan.

  Yet the essential warp of Brooklyn has remained intact. The village-scale neighborhoods bear no resemblance to the canyons of Manhattan. There are still a couple of slaughterhouses within walking distance of my apartment, where I can order the execution of a chicken (or a rabbit), and there is a seaman’s bar whose décor (and to only a slightly lesser extent its prices) seems frozen in 1955. What I’ve lost in Manhattan I’ve found in Brooklyn, so it seems mawkish to mourn.

  MOST of the concerts and almost all the parties I attend are in Brooklyn. I often run into friends on the street, which makes sense, because I have only about five friends my age left in Manhattan. If I didn’t have to commute to an office downtown, I’d rarely cross the river.

  There are still, of course, reasons to do so. Recently I went to Midtown for an event at the New York Public Library. As soon as I came out of the subway, I regretted my decision. The Rockefeller Center Christmas tree had just been unveiled, and a crowd of overjoyed people, perhaps emboldened by the padding of their winter coats, immediately began to coalesce around me.

  Barricades had been set up not only along Fifth Avenue, but also along many of the side streets. Police officers ordered the heavy pedestrian traffic to advance through Saks — literally through the department store, passing between the makeup counters and scarf racks — to get from 50th Street to 49th. “Blame the tree,” one of the officers shouted, “not me!”

  Yet for the most part, the people seemed happy to be there: They had come from all over the world to experience Holiday Season New York.

  I was running late, however, and as I tried to make my way through the scrum, I found myself throwing elbows and cursing at the city. Only later that night, when I looked up at Times Square, did I stop to admire the museum that Manhattan has become. The hysterical wattage of the billboards had turned the night sky over Broadway a pale blue — a kind of artificial, perpetual dusk into which the New York I once knew has floated, never to return. I watch that New York float farther away all the time, marveling at the sparkle, but relieved to live in a different city.

  Nathaniel Rich, an editor at The Paris Review, is the author of “The Mayor’s Tongue,” a novel to be published by Riverhead Books in April.

  
  

  Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

   

  Now, About Your BMW

  

  Monica Almeida/The New York Times

  February 3, 2008

  Now, About Your BMW

  By LAWRENCE ULRICH

  SOME customers waiting patiently for a new BMW have received unhappy news: 122 were totaled during a rough North Atlantic crossing that damaged 430 of the vehicles.

  The Courage, a car carrier headed to New Jersey from a North Sea port in Germany, rolled in heavy winter seas on Jan. 2, breaking BMWs from their lashings and sending them pinballing around a cargo hold. The ship docked in Newark on Jan. 11.

  “Once one car broke loose, it all started going downhill,” said Tom Plucinsky, a BMW spokesman. “They just beat each other to death.”

  The smashed cars included 30 examples of one of the year’s most anticipated models: the high-performance M3 coupe and sedan. Mr. Plucinsky said the M3s were not customer models, but were designated for dealer introduction events.

  The 732 BMWs aboard also included 3-, 5-, and 7-Series models, X3 sport utilities and the first 1 Series coupes for the United States. The 1 Series, a new model, goes on sale in March.

  Mr. Plucinsky said BMW had contacted the customers affected. For models whose damage is less than 3 percent of its value, buyers can choose to accept a repaired car or a similar model, or have a new car built to order.

  Repairable cars with more than 3 percent damage will be driven by company employees. They will eventually be resold as certified used cars, with full disclosure of their history.

  BMW estimated that the retail value of the totaled cars was more than $6 million.

  
  

  Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

   

  An Open and Shut Marriage

  

  David Chelsea

  February 3, 2008

  Modern Love

  An Open and Shut Marriage

  By COLETTE DeDONATO

  AT an upscale pub in our small Northwestern town, one of the mothers seated around our table made an indissoluble confession: she told us she had been having a very serious crush on a man who was not her husband. She said the crush bothered her. Besides making her feel guilty, it also made her unsure of the status of her marriage. As she spoke, red blotches formed around her neck.

  Being new in town and newer still to this tradition of a ladies’ night out, I had little at stake in the relationship and felt free to question her about her potential indiscretion. I was also halfway through my second glass of pinot noir on an almost empty stomach.

  “It doesn’t seem very realistic to be attracted to only one person for the rest of your life, does it?” I said, hoping to put her at ease.

  “It doesn’t,” she said. “But the fact that I keep making excuses to go see this man makes me question my motives.”

  “What are your motives?” I asked.

  My question was met by silence. She either didn’t know or couldn’t form a response. So the rest of us quickly filled the void by musing about the different people we’ve had crushes on: the guy who makes our soy latte every morning, the local celebrity politician, the obviously gay tailor, the friend of a college-bound nephew.

  Nearly all of us agreed it was O.K. to “crush out” on someone, and even to tell our partner or husband (or our couples therapist) about it in an effort to be honest, and thus mature, in our relationships. The unspoken assumption was that it was not O.K. to act on it.

  Despite my general attitude of acceptance when it comes to people questioning their most troubling emotions, I’ve learned to tread carefully on the conjoined subjects of fidelity and monogamy. My experience tells me that it’s a minefield and that no one except Dr. Phil-inspired talk-show exhibitionists and the admittedly polyamorous are ready to talk openly about it.

  I don’t belong to either of those groups. But, to be fair, I’ve given polyamory my best shot.

  In graduate school, when my boyfriend then — a touchy-feely, anarchist performance artist type — announced he wanted to see other people because monogamy was “a bourgeois construct,” I reluctantly went along with him for about a year, thinking that dismantling the dominant paradigm was the right, countercultural thing to do.

  Mostly what it did, however, was make me paranoid about getting a sexually transmitted disease, despite our practice of safe sex. I began to imagine every woman I encountered in his circle of friends as the one who might have had sex with him just hours before.

  My respect for him dwindled as I viewed his need to see other women less as a political stance than simply his sexual overdrive combined with a lack of impulse control. We eventually split up, and I looked for someone who wanted to have an old-fashioned relationship. The emotional trafficking that being “poly” required was just too exhausting, using up energy I needed for school and two jobs. I saw no benefit, anyway: the men I broached the idea with were just freaked out by it.

  Later, when I found the man I wanted to spend my life with, and he and I started talking about marriage, we discussed our worries of signing on to something that had an almost 50 percent failure rate. We wanted to believe in marriage as a viable option without being duped by the fairy tale expectations of it. I know people who have been married three and four times, and it always makes me wonder: Why keep marching down the aisle and making the same promises?

  Historically, of course, marriage was a business arrangement, with infidelity (at least for men) being the acceptable loophole. It wasn’t until the 18th century that love gained credibility as a reason for marriage. And now, in the 21st century, marriage is supposed to do it all for both husband and wife — love, companionship, family and work — a supposedly one-size-fits-all answer to a couple’s every emotional and sexual need for 40, 50, even 60 years.

  Skeptical of buying into such grandiose promises, we approached marriage with an open mind, knowing that we loved and trusted each other and that we were determined to be honest no matter what, even if that meant admitting that we might occasionally be attracted to other people.

  Sublimating our inner desires seemed like a recipe for obsession and deceit. We were just trying to be realistic about an institution we had always viewed as being a little sanctimonious, one that made more sense when human life expectancy was about 43, and when, financially speaking, women needed to be taken care of.

  So, several years into our marriage, when a good friend of mine told me that she had a crush on my husband (and I’d sort of figured that his interest in her photography career had developed into more of an interest in seeing all of her tattoos), I knew that all of our theorizing about what makes a successful life partnership was about to face its first real-life application.

  I didn’t feel particularly threatened by this friend. I trusted her, and I never imagined her to be a woman for whom my husband would leave me. In fact, I never thought he would leave, period. I reasoned that since he and I could be so open with each other, our marriage must really be invincible. And if I were to give the two of them permission to “explore their feelings,” it would also give me a chance to dawdle in the feelings I’d developed for a colleague at work. We’d all take baby steps — nothing dramatic — and see how it went.

  But we immediately faced logistical concerns. If my husband was out with her, what should I be doing? Did I need to plan my time with my colleague to coincide with the time he spent with her? Did my husband and I need to tell each other whenever we planned to spend time with the other person?

  A FEW solid rules would have been helpful, but without knowing how either relationship might progress, we didn’t know how to set them. It seemed odd and presumptuous to be negotiating rules for relationships and situations that were themselves unknown and unpredictable. So what would the boundaries be? Was kissing allowed? More?

  We knew lying was not an option. We had agreed that lying is what made it “cheating,” leading to hurt and distrust and causing the real damage to the relationship. But how much truth could we realistically handle? I wasn’t sure how much I really wanted to know about what they were doing.

  As it turned out, he had nothing to worry about with me. My flirtation quickly died under the weight of my friend’s moral discomfort. After a few lunches he grew uneasy about the gray zone we had entered. There was one late evening of sushi and cocktails, but it was I who felt guilty and decided to go home so my husband wouldn’t be waiting and wondering. The next day my colleague called and told me he couldn’t do it anymore. His friends had advised him against the situation; he didn’t want to get hurt.

  Meanwhile, my good friend and my husband were continuing to have good times taking pictures and going back to her apartment to develop them and continue their mild flirtation. Then one night, when it had gotten too late for my comfort zone, he called to say our Volvo wagon wouldn’t start. I knew the car to be unreliable, but I couldn’t deny a nagging doubt: Could he be lying about the car just to spend the night with her?

  That, for me, was the breaking point. It didn’t matter if he was telling the truth. I doubted him anyway, so the result was the same. I further realized that I couldn’t handle the thought of them spending the night together, sleeping in the same bed, even in a Bert and Ernie arrangement. My imagination ran wild. I felt as if I were imploding.

  What had I expected? That spending the night with her would send him running back to me? That honesty would override any feelings of possessiveness or hurt?

  Several arguments and 10 therapy sessions later, we thanked each other for allowing that kind of creative romantic safari into our lives but vowed never to do it again. We weren’t bored with each other. And despite our ostensibly progressive notions about marriage, we were not impervious to the full range of human emotions — rage, jealousy, fear of abandonment — that tend to surface when we cross the boundaries of love.

  As one might imagine, the good friend and I did not remain good friends. That bond was the weaker one, it turned out. She and I tried several times to talk it through in the hope of preserving our friendship, but we finally agreed that once the door had been left open, too many flies had come in and spoiled the ambience.

  I’ve known many people who have had successful open marriages, and I admire their intentions — some of them, anyway. You have to want to go the distance on that emotional seesaw, and it takes great courage. You have to commit to spelling out every rule and consideration clearly and with great enunciation. You can’t just glide over the syllables.

  Back at the pub, our ladies’ night out was breaking up, and I offered to walk the confessor home. I didn’t tell her about my experiences. Instead I asked what marriage meant to her. Could she let go of the “rules” and her expectations enough to at least be O.K. with everything she was feeling?

  She didn’t know, but we both agreed that having a crush gives you a much-needed adrenaline rush. Somebody is treating you the way your spouse did oh-so-many years ago, looking into your eyes without wondering if you cleaned his favorite shirt, or paid the mortgage on time, or will turn out to be his mother. Looking at you with nothing but passion and a sense of possibility.

  Tonight I’m going to try to look at my husband the same way. He’ll probably be watching one of our favorite shows, “Big Love,” in which case I’ll watch with him and we’ll laugh at the same lines. We love to laugh together. It keeps us sane.

  Colette DeDonato lives in Oregon.

  
  

  Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

   

   

  Today’s Papers

  The Long and Winding Road

  By Daniel Politi
  Posted Thursday, Feb. 7, 2008, at 6:23 A.M. E.T.

  The New York Times, Washington Post, and the Wall Street Journal‘s world-wide newsbox lead with the latest from the Democratic presidential race. There was little time to rest after the biggest primary day in history as Sen. Hillary Clinton’s campaign claimed she came out on top becaues of her victories in big states, while Sen. Barack Obama’s aides pointed to his wins in more states as proof that he was the one who came out ahead. Clinton revealed that she had lent her campaign $5 million in late January and she asked supporters to give $3 million to her campaign over three days. Obama’s campaign gave word that he raised more than $3 million yesterday, on top of the $32 million he had raised in January. The Los Angeles Times goes with a two-story lead looking at the reasons behind Clinton’s victory in California and Sen. John McCain’s continuing problems with trying to get the conservative Republican base on his side. Some say the only way McCain can get their support is to pick a very conservative running mate.

  USA Today leads with a dispatch from Mosul, where U.S. troops will probably have more trouble rooting out al-Qaida in Iraq because the militants have apparently learned from their mistakes and are cultivating better relationships with regular citizens. In Mosul, al-Qaida militants warn civilians before bomb attacks and are not enforcing strict Islamic laws, which is a marked contrast with how they acted in other parts of the country. This makes it less likely that the residents of Iraq’s third-largest city would want to join the U.S. military to fight the insurgents.

  As Clinton and Obama get ready for the next phase of what will undoubtedly be a long contest for delegates, both campaigns are trying to describe themselves as the underdogs in the battle. But it’s clear that Clinton is losing ground in the battle for dollars, and the papers report that several members of her campaign staff have agreed to work without pay this month. The NYT points out that Clinton is in a tighter spot financially largely because of “fatigue” among her donors, who have been hit up for money since her Senate re-election campaign in 2006. Still, Obama said yesterday that Clinton had the clear advantage because of her well-known name and a slight edge in superdelegates.

  There was probably no sweeter win for Clinton than California. There were predictions that the race would be close but she easily won the state thanks largely to the support of Latinos, who accounted for 30 percent of voters, and women. Obama tried to reach out to Latino voters by emphasizing his support for issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. But some now think Obama’s assumption that Latinos would care deeply about licenses was mistaken and he could have received more traction by talking about education and the economy.

  So, who won Tuesday? Depends on who you ask. As USAT notes, there were several different delegate counts going around yesterday because of the complicated formulas used by the Democrats that “could give a certified public accountant a migraine.” The WP cites the Associated Press numbers and says Clinton won 737 delegates yesterday and Obama got 699, with almost 300 still to be awarded. The NYT says Clinton has a slight edge with 892 delegates to Obama’s 716. The WSJ prefers to go with 1,000 delegates for Clinton and 902 for Obama. (Slate‘s Christopher Beam takes a look at the different numbers.)

  Every day that passes seems to bring more questions about whether the Democratic contest will go on until the convention in August. The NYT reports that the party’s chairman, Howard Dean, came out yesterday to say that the candidates should do everything possible to prevent that scenario from materializing. Dean estimated there will be a nominee “in the middle of March or April” and emphasized that if one hasn’t been selected, “then we’re going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement.” What kind of arrangement Dean has in mind that would make either candidate want to drop out of such a long (and expensive) race isn’t clear. Everyone points to the likelihood that the candidates will continue trading victories in the upcoming states as Obama has an edge in the next few contests this month, but Clinton is favored to win more states in March.

  Amazingly, the LAT is alone in fronting news that the White House said water-boarding is a legal interrogation tactic and President Bush could authorize its use in the future. The LAT says the statement came as a surprise, particularly since many don’t understand why the adminisration seems eager to open a debate about such a controversial issue it had previously refused to talk about and that many considered closed.

  All the papers front a story or picture about the dozens of tornadoes that hit five Southern states and killed at least 55 people. Many expect the death toll to climb in what is being described as the deadliest tornado disaster in nearly a decade.

  The WP fronts news that Senate Democrats failed to make progress on their stimulus package that is broader and more expensive than the one that was already approved by the House. After much back-and-forth, Democrats fell one vote short of the 60 needed to advance the bill as most Republicans stood together in opposing the measure. This makes it virtually certain that the House bill will pass Congress, although the Senate might still try to change some provisions in the package.

  The NYT goes inside with a look at court documents made public yesterday that make clear the CIA destroyed the interrogation videotapes at a time when a federal judge was still actively seeking information about the interrogation of one of the al-Qaida operatives.

  The New York City medical examiner announced yesterday that actor Heath Ledger died of an accidental “abuse of prescription medications.” The combination of six drugs, including painkillers, anti-anxiety medication, a sleeping pill, and an antihistamine, led to “acute intoxication.” Some speculated that perhaps Ledger had become addicted, and the LAT points out the actor had frequently talked about how he used prescription drugs. But, as the WSJ points out, doctors warn that “patients are often woefully unaware of the potential serious consequences of the additive effects of prescription medications.”

  The NYT notes that, based on 2007 fund-raising figures, no one got a bigger bang for his buck than Mike Huckabee. The former Arkansas governor won 156 delegates at a cost of approximately $45,000 each. Mitt Romney, on the other hand, spent $654,000 per delegate. But that’s chump change compared with Rep. Ron Paul, who has lined up five delegates at a cost of about $4 million each.

  Daniel Politi writes “Today’s Papers” for Slate. He can be reached at todayspapers@slate.com

   

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