Not that I have any experience. I am the body and soul of discretion. But I recommend that everybody have at least one idiot love affair (ILA). They are so humbling, and they suddenly make every song Sheena Easton ever recorded make sense, even the ones where she was sleeping with the artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince.

To have a true idiot love affair you must be old enough to know better. Seventeen-year-olds cannot have idiot love affairs because romantic lunacy is their nature. I'm thinking, for a supreme, undeniable, whack-yourself-in-the-forehead idiot love affair (in Latin, *amoris dunderheadis*) you should be at least 35.

Choosing Your Prey (I Mean, Lover) 

A first-rate idiot love affair must occur with somebody off-limits. Not totally taboo, just crazy out da box. A person that anybody with half a brain would advise you, off of whom, to keep your grimy little paws. Every idiot love affair bears the seeds of its own destruction.

Acceptable Candidates for an ILA

• your doctor
• your professor
• your boss/superior
• your religious leader (except your guru; too obvious.)

Superior Candidates for an ILA

• your doctor, married to your first cousin
• your professor with your spouse in the same class
• your boss AND your superior
• your religious leader's kid in college

Superlative Candidates for an ILA

• your doctor, married to your religious leader
• your professor with a job in bare-all talk radio
• your boss who's just given you a big promotion, causing you to acquire a large mortgage

The more you lay on the line in an ILA, the greater the excitement. An idiot love affair is insanely risky. Ideally, an ILA will risk two careers, two families, two credit ratings, a religious assembly, and at least one housecat.

So Long Cerebrum, Hellooooo Hypothalamus

To have a really good ILA, your higher brain functions must go AWOL and let biochemistry take over. Scientists have proven that infatuated people are essentially drug addicts. Their brains create imitations of every mind-bending drug imaginable and dump them into their bloodstreams. These drugs are indistinguishable from stuff you'd be slipped in a dark alley in a paper bag.

A friend of mine calls hormones "moaning whores." You do not want your whores just moaning. For a top-drawer ILA, you want them driving.

Dr. Brian Gilmartin's article, "The Biochemistry of Falling in Love" (http://www.angelfire.com/ab6/polepino/Chapter11/Biochemistryoflove.html), explains that when you spot a romantic prospect on the horizon, your hypothalamus says to your pituitary gland, "Whoa. . ." (I'm paraphrasing). Your pituitary gland responds with "Go!" and dumps chemicals into your bloodstream. The sex glands then say, "Gone, babe!" and give you another hit of chemicals.

Your hypothalamus is not satisfied with this drug cocktail, but engineers things so that it will happen again whenever your darling is within a mile of you. Some of us are overly shy and cerebral and fight against the hijacking of our bodies. Don't! For a really idiot love affair, let go and let the phenylethylamine. And those opioids. Gotta love 'em.

Just Like in the Movies

In order to be superbly stupid--ranking as one of the dumbest, most self-destructive things you've ever done--your ILA should be totally divorced from all reality. Keep all messy, ugly real life totally separate from l'amour. Spend at least two and a half hours getting ready to meet your lover for a cup of coffee. Go out for Extreme Hygiene--invest in nose hair clippers and cuticle nippers and professional dermabrasion.

Go to whoever's apartment is clean and has no kids in it--or if both of you are slobs, check into a hotel. Make sure you drink together a lot. There might still be some higher brain function lurking up there somewhere that might ruin the moment. An inebriated love affair is an idiot love affair, so make sure you always see your precious poopsie in a lovely drunken haze.

This is your Great Love, your Rhett-and-Scarlett, Kate-and-Spence, Bogey-and-Bacall romance that you're having with your drill sargeant (who was once married to your sister). Make sure it takes place in exotic locales, like the Olive Garden and Holiday Inn (hey, it's the best you can do--your brain only filled your blood with chemicals, not your wallet with cash). Search out beautiful backdrops worthy of a movie set--docks, greenhouses, deep verdant woods--but don't forget to have at least two or three rendezvous in really risky locations--like the roof of the office where you both work.

When it All Comes Crashing Down

You'll know you've experienced an A-1 numbskull love affair--leaving the asinine entanglements of ordinary humans in the dust--if your heart is well and truly broken. If you continue to behave as if you're in a bad movie.

If you try to get "closure": for example, by burying the handtowel from the Holiday Inn in the greenhouse in a candle-lit ceremony. If you kept a blood alcohol level of 96% the whole time you were crazy in love, but manage to bump it to 98% in the breakup. If, during lunch hour at work, you climb up on the roof and cry bitter tears into the gutter, thinking about your rooftop passion and how you would jump off the roof and then boy would he/she be sorry, only the corporate dumpster is in the way, and how would the mortician ever remove all that ink?

There can be no doubt, after all, that your wife's obstetrician's receptionist is your Soul Mate, that in eons past God planned that you two should be together, right between the design of flying dinosaurs and the final strokes on the Eurasian continental plate. Ah, those priceless moments over a pasta bowl at the Olive Garden. Add a salad for just $2.99.  Ah, those romantic interludes in the office janitorial supply closet, standing on a wet mop with a can of Comet digging into your elbow and a dustpan up your. . . oh, but I'm getting choked up now. Did I mention I, personally, have never had an idiot love affair?

I believe I did. Sniff.