Last Saturday, I was feeling sick and visited the emergency room at Chestnut Hill Hospital. I arrived at 11:45PM and told the triage nurse that I was suffering from extreme neck pain, dizziness, and nausea. At 3AM, I was finally examined by a staff member, to whom I repeated the same list of symptoms. Around 5AM, I was awakened by a doctor shining a bright light in my face. After making sure I could feel my arms, he asked how I injured my neck. Before I could answer, he cut me off and said “I’ve heard enough. Do you want an x-ray or not?” I told him that I had already been x-rayed, at which point he indicated that he would return shortly and finish his examination.

At approximately 6:30AM, another staff member handed me a prescription for muscle relaxers and ibuprofen along with discharge papers that said “You have been diagnosed with neck pain.” I explained that I already knew I had neck pain, and was more concerned about not being able to walk or drive because of my persistent dizziness and increasing nausea. After several minutes of prodding, they agreed to convince the doctor to come back and actually examine me.

When he returned, the doctor was both confrontational and condescending. Nearly shouting, he starting to enumerate an exhaustive list of procedures that he had already conducted, none of which actually happened. The doctor then snatched the papers from the staffer and threatened to take the prescription back because of my “complaining.” Frustrated but weak, I calmly explained that I simply wanted to make sure that he fully understood the range of my symptoms. At this point, the doctor became more enraged, alternately barking “What do you want me to do?” and mockingly stating “You’re not gonna die!” When I reiterated my desire for help, he deadpanned “Do you want the prescription or not?” I told him that I did, at which point he coldly replied “Then go home.” The doctor then turned around and walked away. As I exited the building, the staff member whispered to me that this behavior was common for the doctor.

Did the doctor think that I was fishing for drugs? Perhaps. Would he have treated me differently if he knew I was a college professor? Probably. Was he a racist? I don’t know, but it’s worth noting that he wasn’t white. What happened to me at Chestnut Hill Hospital is disturbing, but not uncommon. Every day, the nation’s most vulnerable citizens are abused, dehumanized, and underserved in hospitals around the country. Even if the diagnosis  is correct, a doctor’s failure to maintain an ethic of compassion, concern, and care leaves a patient feeling unsafe and unwelcome. This is a truly sickening reality.

Question to the Sexpert:

“One of the common themes of your columns is that there really isn’t any criteria to benchmark sexual activity, and what is “normal” to one individual can be call crazy, distorted or abnormal to another. However, knowing this, I have to ask you this common question: How frequently should couples engage in sex on a weekly, monthly, or even yearly basis? I know you would say, “to each his own”, but I am interested in your personal opinion of how often a typical married couple might engage. Is 3 times a week uncommon and unrealistic? Is once a week sort of the norm?”

Let’s start from the beginning, shall we? And by that I mean the beginning of the relationship, when you thought your partner was pretty much the reason the Earth continued to orbit around the Sun, or more specifically, her ass was the reason. Odds are good you were having more sex back then. You continued on the path towards your current location, I’m guessing, the way most couples do and you’ve now found yourself looking back longingly at days of yore where the streets were cleaner and sex was plentiful. What was different about those days? Plenty.

Your Brain
The first 18-36 months of a romantic relationship are unique because not only do you not yet know all the little annoying habits your partner has and you can project on them hopes and aspirations that are not remotely in line with the reality of who they are but you also have the benefit of being high as a fucking kite on the same brain chemicals that get people hooked on heroin. Between the effects of dopamine, epinephrine and serotonin you’re as whacked out as Pete Doherty on the drug of love at first, a phenomenon which inevitably fades (and is hopefully replaced by something more substantial).

Your Body
Not knowing how old you are I can’t assume bad hips, arthritis and other ailments of age are playing a part in the diminished amount of sex in your life, although they play a major role in the fact that the older a couple is, the less often they engage in sexual activity. Well, that and the fact they have to have sex with other old people. That’d slow me down too. In addition to barriers like joint pain, age brings difficulty with erections and lubrication and, most tragically, alterations in physical appearance that can be near deal-breakers. Married life often leads to weight gain and having children exacerbates the issue for both partners.

Your Behavior/Life
Having kids also means a big time suck that leaves parents drained of energy. Many people can’t fathom spending time licking inner thighs when there’s so much damn laundry to do. Romance goes right out the door for many people who get used to each other and take for granted the strength of the relationship. I mean, are you still opening doors and bringing flowers home?

Novelty
The biggest factor though, is novelty. According to the law of diminishing marginal utility, the more a good is available and consumed, the less it is appreciated, so having the same sex all the time is going to become less and less appealing to people. This is especially true if you have a pat routine down where your wife can fully expect that after x amount of time your head will be at location y and at time z you will be inserting tab a into slot b.

Study after study finds that couples in their twenties have the most sex, about 2-3 times per week on average with cohabitating (non-married) couples and gay male couples having the most. Most married couples have sex about 7 times per month. Consistently studies also find the amount decreases with time and when controlling for other factors, the biggest reason is lack of novelty and the decrease is most dramatic in the first few years after the wedding.

Other considerations:
There are also theories that taking into account quality versus quantity is important. If couples get really good at being sexual together they might be more efficient about the time they devote to the act, getting together less times but maneuvering around the equipment more agilely.

And what are you counting as sex? If all you want is penile vaginal intercourse, then prepare yourself for a slow and steady decline of your sex life, leading to eventual death. Reconsider the value of hand jobs, making out and other activities that sustained you through your adolescent years. As Dan Savage has pointed out, straight men might think differently about how much sex they want if every time they had sex they had to be the one getting fucked. It changes one’s perspective on the matter.

What To Do
Obviously I’ve made it this far and haven’t told you the ‘right’ amount of sex to have per week. It’s because I don’t think that’s what you really wanted. What I can do for you is suggest you consider a few tactics that might increase the amount you are having to a level that is more to your liking.
1.    Spend more time doing nurturing, romantic crap that you think is a waste of time that improves your relationship and shows your wife the side of you she used to have more sex with.
2.    Introduce some new flash into the repertoire. Buy a blindfold, vibrating panties and riding crop. Do it up against a hall closet, try getting pegged in the butt, something, anything to mix it up. If she absolutely knows what’s behind Door Number One of your sex life, it’s a lot easier to say no.
3.    Exercise. I know, I know, I say this all the time. It’s because it’s fucking true. Your testosterone rates will rise and you’ll feel and look better and she’ll see it.
4.    Accept the fact that you don’t get laid as much as you did in college. Realize that this lack of banging has been replaced by much more substantial, important stuff that will last you for much longer.

Good luck to you and your goal of getting to three times a week.

Timaree Schmit is a trained sexologist who has also worked as an HIV prevention counselor and sex educator. She has written widely for numerous publications and was recently recognized by Coed Magazine as one of the 10 Most Famous College Sex Columnists in America. Timaree is completing a doctorate in Human Sexuality at Widener University.Do you have a question or comment? Please email Timaree directly at sexpert@MarcLamontHill.com

The bizarre tale of how the media turned a crooked Republican into the mirage of a principled politician.

McCain’s ‘Maverick’ Myth Is the Media’s Creation
By David Brock and Paul Waldman

Perhaps no word better defines John McCain in the public imagination than “maverick.” It’s a word that, more than “straight talk” or “moderate” or “reformer,” has come to occupy a seemingly permanent place next to the senator’s name in the media. It is also distinct from those other modifiers that have come to identify McCain. As critical as the idea of ideological moderation is to the Myth of McCain, his status as a maverick is not about what he believes but about who he is-something far more important in the personality-driven world of today’s politics.

In later years, when asked to name his proudest moment in Congress, John McCain would go all the way back to his first year in the House of Representatives to point to a case in which he stood against a Republican president. In 1983, McCain voted against Ronald Reagan’s decision to deploy U.S. troops to Lebanon. “I do not see any obtainable objectives in Lebanon,” he said at the time, “and the longer we stay there, the harder it will be to leave.”43 McCain sees the act as a defining moment: the neophyte lawmaker breaking ranks with his party and his political hero. (The actual vote was 270-161 in favor of deployment; McCain was joined by twenty-seven Republicans in opposition.) The dissenters would later be vindicated when a truck bomber slammed into the Marine barracks in Lebanon, killing 241 U.S. servicemen and precipitating a U.S. withdrawal. “It demonstrated to me that you really have to do, at the end of the day, what you fundamentally know is right,” McCain told the National Journal years later.

At the time, McCain’s decision to object was barely noted (a New York Times story on the House vote buried a quote from him at the bottom of its story). McCain evidently sees his 1983 vote as the moment where his political identity as a maverick began to form, but that reputation did not really take hold until much later. In fact, McCain’s early years in Congress did not attract much national attention, nor did they evince much evidence of what would become the Myth of McCain. It wasn’t until the late 1980s that the press even began to take notice of his self-proclaimed penchant for breaking with party orthodoxy. Early in his career, McCain was seldom described as someone too principled to be bound by party loyalty or the momentary dictates of partisanship. The first time anyone referred to him as a “maverick” in the press appears to be a February 1989 States News Service story, which quoted Dan Casey, then-executive director of the American Conservative Union, saying about McCain, “He is a good conservative but somewhat of a maverick.”There was no explanation of what made him a maverick, other than the fact that the group had given him a rating of merely 80 out of 100. Other such descriptions are few and far between. Another story from 1989, in Newsday, described him as a Republican expected to “break ranks” on Dick Cheney’s proposed budget cuts to the F-14D aircraft program. But apart from these faint glimmers, there was little indication of the McCain image that would eventually form in the press.

In 1992, McCain was one of three Republican senators to vote for Democratic campaign finance reform legislation (all the Senate Democrats except two voted in favor). The bill called for the provision of taxpayer funds and other incentives to urge candidates to abide by voluntary spending limits; it was vetoed by then-president George H. W. Bush, a veto that the Senate failed to override. In 1993, McCain again cast himself in the role of party rebel in the campaign finance debate. In deliberations over an identical measure to the one Bush had vetoed in 1992, McCain proposed amendments that caught the attention of the media. McCain offered one amendment that barred candidates from using campaign money for personal expenses such as vacations, mortgage payments, and clothing purchases, among others. Another amendment pushed for the campaign reforms, if enacted, to go into effect in 1994 instead of 1996, as originally proposed. Little noted was that McCain’s amendment was identical to one that his Arizona colleague, Senator Dennis DeConcini (D), was set to introduce to the Senate, before McCain beat him to the punch by a day-a move that won McCain credit for the amendment.

For the rest of the story, click here.

McCain Highlights Foreign Policy Differences

In an effort to distance himself from President Bush’s foreign policy, John McCain called for closing Guantanamo Bay and said the Unites States could not consider ourselves a lone superpower. What do you think?

Ben Shapiro,
Systems Analyst
“After Bush slandered him for fathering an illegitimate black child and challenged his status as a war hero, this is how McCain repays him?”

Laurie Frendrich,
Horse Trainer
“No more Gitmo? Then where would President McCain put all the enemy combatants that we capture in Iraq over the next thousand years?”

Paulo Garcia,
Cabinet Maker
“He probably didn’t need to end his speech with ‘Ya happy now?’”

Today’s photo of the day shows Chris Webber, who announced his retirement last week. In addition to being one of the most talented power forwards of all time, Webber’s on-the-court and off-the-court style changed the face of the NBA.