You know, I don't think anybody could say that I've lived a sheltered life. And I certainly don't consider myself a prude, but increasingly there are things that are happening in human male/female relationships that I just don't understand.

Let me give you an example. In the Tailhook scandal - you remember that one - a bunch of Navy men lined up to form a gauntlet and evidently, according to the published reports, took enormous pleasure in forcing women to run it while they grabbed at their clothes and groped them. Now, in the range of human sexual behavior, this is pretty distasteful, pretty aggressive, and what we used to call pretty tacky, but has a certain familiar ring to it. It's not OUT of the realm of predictable if disgusting male behavior. But, what they did next is.

What they did next was to invite some women into a room, drink enormous amounts of alcoholic beverages with them and they shaved the women's legs. Yes, you heard me correctly, they shaved their legs. Now, this gave my eyebrows a little twitch. Indeed, I thought, rolling my mind around this one. Shaved their legs, boy that sounds really sexy to me. And, it gets worse.

They then, in this very same room, became even more drunken (if that is possible) and proceeded to drink shots from each other's navels.

Now I don't have the vaguest idea how one goes about drinking a shot from someone's navel, much less why one would wish to do so, but I assume it is possible since that is what they said they were doing. This is the sort of thing a less stable person might ponder in the dead of the night, when sleep was elusive.

But, back to the subject. It might be one thing if this was an isolated instance, actions committed by a bunch of blindly drunk Navy men, but there is more going on out there.

Fairly recently, we were treated to the story of a police officer who (in uniform) met another police officer in a grave yard, forced her to get down on her hands and knees and (this is a quote) bark like a dog before she evidently forced him to have oral sex against his will. You'll probably need a few seconds to think about that one. I did.

This story took me to my husband. "Gayle, dear." I said. " I just wanted to know, just checking you understand, if ever, even in your wildest fantasies you...thought about having a woman get down on her hands and knees and bark like a dog in a cemetery? Do you find that the least bit sexy? No. Good. Just, just...checking. Just making sure darlin'. Thought I might have missed something. Thank you.

Continuing with the rich tapestry of human behavior, while all this navel sipping and howling at the moon is going on, there are other couples out there trying not to be couples at all without benefit of the divorce court. Remember a couple of years ago, when this woman tried to hire a hit man to kill a secretary in the law school who she thought was going to turn her in for cheating? Then, just while she was at it, she decided to use the same hit man to kill her husband so that when she became a lawyer, she wouldn't have to share all the money she was planning to make?

Now, it's not every man who wakes up in the morning, strolls outside, and opens the newspaper to find out that his wife had hired a hit man to kill him. And do you know what? Months after she was arrested, he was reported in the newspaper as still with her, waiting to see if they couldn't work it out.

After this one, paper in hand, I again approached my husband. "Gayle darlin'" I said. "I just want to make something perfectly clear here. You know, just a minor thing. Just so you know. If I ever read in the newspaper that you've hired a hit man to kill me, there isn't going be any of this working it out nonsense. It's finished. I know it may sound a tad hard, but one hit man and it's over.."

I don't know, I don't know. Hit men, tonguing other people's navels and howling at the moon. Where is it all going to end.