I don’t enjoy scenes.

I grew up living in the midst of a few, and ever since have avoided them like a particularly unattractive plague. This childhood desire to evade confrontation, in fact, turned me into a world class people pleaser, so eager to make others feel happy and loved that I allowed them to leave stiletto marks on my face.

And while I’m proud to say that that behavior has moderated over the years, there’s nothing like meeting a sky freak to see just how far you’ve come.

When I fly alone, I make it a point to politely greet the person seated next to me and to find something to compliment them on. That way, when I insert my nose into a book or pretend to be asleep in order to avoid a four-hour discussion of rectal fissures or how 9/11 was an inside job, they don’t get offended. They’re happy, I’m happy.

Conveniently, this behavior is also advantageous should one’s plane crash into the ocean and you need to push them off the only floating piece of wreckage. (They’re less likely to hold a grudge, since, after all, you’ve thoughtfully praised their choice of flip flops.)

Thus, a recent flight from St. Louis to LA should have been a convivial slam dunk. But I was seated next to a skyfreak.

This flight was, as always these days, completely full. And, as a pretty, fashionable, 30ish woman – who I’ll call “Renata” – took the middle seat between a kindly older lady and myself, I silently thanked God (since, of course, He has nothing better to do than to coordinate seating on American Airlines). I smiled graciously as she settled into the seat, complimented her backpack, and, my work done, returned to my hilarious book, The Memoirs of a Beautiful Boy.

It quickly became clear, however, that Renata had “issues”. It began with some simple fidgeting: opening and closing various reading materials every 20 or 30 seconds, followed in quick succession by a lean forward, then a lean back, then a sharp, 90-degree turn in either direction like she was auditioning her seatmates for a hot make-out session.

The older lady, mystified by this behavior, caught my eye as if to say, “Do you think she has a bomb strapped to her Spanx?”

Ever the accommodating one, I said nothing, choosing instead to close my eyes and attempt to nap.

At this point, Renata tired of fidgeting and got up to go to the restroom. This would not have been a problem had she only gone once. But after the fourth trip in one hour, her “I’m sorry’s” – as she climbed over the older lady and fell into my lap, startling me awake – seemed a bit pointless, since she wasn’t sorry or she’d have stayed in her seat and strapped a colostomy bag to her calf.

Don’t make a scene, I thought.

Realizing that sleep was out of the question, I opened my book and attempted to read once again. But Renata was just gearing up for her eleven o’clock number.

She then began – as God is my witness – doing aerobics in her seat. I am not kidding. These upper body exercises, apparently designed to prevent an embolism, were far more successful in nearly giving me a black eye and the grandmother in the aisle seat a stroke.

Grin and bear it, I thought. It’ll be over in an hour and fifteen minutes.

Deciding that her workout wasn’t utilizing enough muscle groups, she inserted three sticks of Bubble Yum into her mouth and began popping the gum in rhythm with her movements.

That did it.

Whirling around to face her (which consisted of a fairly imperceptible turn of my head), I announced in my best I sound like I’m joking but I’m kind of NOT voice, “Is your meth dealer meeting you at LAX?”

“I know, right?”

It took my brain a moment to untangle her sentence, given that it shot out of her mouth like a cannon. Renata was clearly under the impression that speed-speaking earned prizes and parting gifts.

“I-think-I-had-way-too-much-coffee-this-morning,” she rattled off in under a second. “I-probably-shouldn’t-drink-that-much-before-I-fly,” she added in a rapid fire coda. “Plus-I’m-used-to-having-a-window-or-an-aisle-seat-and-being-wedged-into-this-middle-seat-is-driving-me-insane.” That last sentence took well over two seconds, which appeared to upend her crack-fueled oral apple cart.

“Oh, trust me,” I replied, before the filter in my brain could clamp down on my mouth, “it’s not just driving YOU insane.”

There was a long silence.

Figuring that she may have fashioned a shiv out of her lipstick tube during one of those trips to the bathroom, I quickly tried to cool the tension by presenting her with what I imagined was a winning, adorable smile.

I was, apparently, the only one who imagined it that way.

“Why are you being such an ASS?” she announced in a voice that required no assistance from the on-board p.a. system.

I glanced at the older lady, who rolled her eyes and let out a heaving sigh.

“I don’t mean to come off that way,” I said in my most inside voice, trying – a bit halfheartedly now – to placate her. “It’s just a little hard to relax with you flailing around like an electroshock patient.”

She slammed her backpack onto the seatback tray table.

“Well, you know what?” she said in her most outside voice. “You can just go electro-f*** yourself!”

 Perhaps unsurprisingly, we spent the remainder of the flight in silence. And I discovered that pretending to be asleep for 74 minutes involves a lot of coordinated breathing and muscle control.

 But as I sat there faking a coma, I realized that although I may still have issues with wanting to please people, sometimes standing up for yourself feels really, really good.

Every once in a great while, you just have to tell someone to go electro-f*** themselves.

I think to think of myself as a spiritual seeker, always in search of enlightenment in whatever religious form it may take. (Provided it doesn’t require detonating stuff, which really tends to complicate things.) And not long ago, my partner and I went to a very edifying church service.

The minister wore a zebraskin cone bra, a cape, a semi-see-through nun’s habit, and a one-piece bodysuit with actual headlights. She lit a piano on fire, fought a dragon and slithered across the floor like a stripper with vertigo.

The house of worship was an 18,000 seat arena. The sermon was all about love, acceptance, treating everyone with respect and kindness, and personal empowerment. There was more pageantry than a Catholic mass and almost as much drinking. It was, in essence, Church With Swear Words.

The leader of this faith was Lady Gaga, who apparently believes that connection to the divine involves showmanship on a level not seen since Cirque du Soleil teamed with Cher.

And really, is that such a bad thing? I grew up on many of the same Christian values – love one another, do unto others as you would have them do unto you – as the ones Lady Gaga espouses, but they were presented in a package that included hymns sung like funeral dirges, Biblical readings that required a CIA code-cracker, and a level of mind-numbing cheerlessness that implied God would smite you for breathing too loudly.

I’m not sure where we got the idea that church was supposed to be dreary and tedious, but I just can’t help but believe that as long as the message is love, God probably doesn’t so much care about the costumes, and whether you fund the spread of his message through tithing or t-shirt sales.

Oh, I just got a mental picture of my childhood minister wearing a zebraskin cone bra. I’d better go wash my eyes out with soap.

Sorry for the delay in posting. Had a family emergency, followed by a mountain of work so high I got a nosebleed. But for the thousands (or dozens, who really knows) of you who missed me, I’m back!

I just finished reading The Bucolic Plague, from the author Josh Kilmer-Purcell, and, as a fellow memoir writer, I am incensed. This book is transparently untruthful, an absolute BOLD-FACED LIE.

I assure you that the fact that Mr. Kilmer-Purcell has sold more books than me has nothing to do with my opinion.

Or the fact that he’s obviously an attention whore, also starring in the hit reality series, The Fabulous Beekman Boys (about how he and his partner moved from Manhattan to upstate New York to become gentlemen farmers).

Or that he must employ a horde of comedy writers, since his books are screamingly funny.

Or that this particular tome was apparently ghost-written, since it adds a layer of immense heart atop his trademark humor.

No, what this is really about is a lack of veracity and integrity.

You see, The Bucolic Plague is a prequel to the Beekman Boys reality show. It tells the story of how Josh (an advertising exec) and his partner Brent (a doctor, aka “Dr. Brent Ridge” from The Martha Stewart Show) stumbled onto the picturesque farm they bought, and the challenges that they faced in trying to forsake their crazy New York jobs for a simpler, less encumbered existence.

That, in itself, was a fine theme. But sadly, Josh has attempted to top it with all kinds of fake literary drama, by claiming that acquiring the farm was only the beginning of their problems.

According to Josh, after buying their farm, Brent was laid off in the 2009 economic cataclysm.

According to Josh, the farm cost so much to run that he wasn’t able to give up his New York job.

According to Josh, after working 60-hour weeks in Manhattan, he travels to Sharon Springs to their rural retreat – and spends the entire weekends farming.

According to Josh, he and Brent seem to have little time together that isn’t spent herding sheep, chasing a llama or scooping up goatsh**.

According to Josh, even though he loves most of it, life is harder now that it was when they lived in New York.

It’s sad that Mr. Kilmer-Purcell needs to cheapen what is otherwise an idyllic story with such conspicuous plot-point ruses. Because anyone who’s ever left their overscheduled, overstressed life knows that when you give it all up to seek a simpler existence, everything is easy. Life becomes beautiful, a veritable picture postcard of pastoral moments and rustic bliss. Your desire to connect more deeply with nature and with family and friends is rewarded with endless moments of pure enchantment and wonder.

I know this, of course, because I personally plan to do it one day, and I already have all those moments mapped out in my head: the gentle frolicking with woodland creatures, the community coming together to raise my barn, the wizened old farmhand offering sage advice about life and love.

The Bucolic Plague – although highly entertaining – purports to be the truth. But Mr. Kilmer-Purcell obviously hasn’t watched enough Disney movies to know how life really goes.

Here’s how the tsunami in Japan went:

1)      Water

2)      Screaming

3)      Rescues

4)      Tears

5)      Hope

6)      Acceptance

7)      Cooperation

8)      Teamwork

9)      Support

10)    Honor

11)    Kindness

12)    Love

Here’s how a tsunami in America would go:

1)      Water

2)      Screaming

3)      Outrage that God would do this to us

4)      Looting

5)      Fistfights

6)      Gunshots

7)      Military intervention

8)      Curfew

9)      Rumors of a Muslim invasion

10)     Hoarding

11)     Suicides

12)     A lot of people waiting for their clothes to fly off in the Rapture

Don’t know if you’ve noticed from the coverage of this disaster, but Japan has pulled together in ways that we never would.

Ways that are clearly anti-American.

And I, for one, think we should sanction them.

In Japan, nobody’s busting windows of Best Buys and carting off flat screens – a clear sign that they’re thumbing their noses at the free market system.

Nobody’s shooting their neighbor in the cardboard box next door because he has a better sleeping bag – an obvious indicator of socialistic impulses.

Nobody’s selling their children into sexual slavery for some clean water and a Big Mac – a transparent bid to elevate themselves as moral arbiters.

Get this: on the news, I saw video of a guy who had lost everything, and still went to work at the restaurant where he was employed (and which was still standing), because other people needed to eat.

I saw men cutting barrels in half, loading the bottoms with wood, boiling water, and passing it out so that others wouldn’t die of dehydration.

I saw an announcement in a shelter that breakfast was ready, and hundreds of people quietly and politely forming a single-file line to eat.

I saw that, in the midst of devastation, one community had set out makeshift containers for recycling (which was sort of ironic since, at that point, the whole city was a giant recycling bin).

The Japanese are clearly some sort of Marxist radicals.

Oh, sure, I suppose that in a sad, weak moment, a disturbingly large number of Americans would behave this way, too…but fortunately, the fat, lazy, and entitled among us would rally and restore America’s role as a leader.

I remember this line from a Jean Kerr book, where she was on a plane, reading the Your Role in a Water Landing (plane crash) laminated card.

“My role in a water landing,” she declared, “is to splash around and cry.”

You said it, Jean. Because we’re America. Our role is to splash around and cry. And take our neighbor’s life vest. And demand that someone else kill the shark.

Because, after all, THAT is the American Way.