Bedtime Stories -- Dear Diary: Time To Put Some Personal Thoughts Behind All Those Statistics

Maybe what I'm proposing will work. You never know unless you try.

It will mean that six or eight or a dozen of you who'll participate will have to put some trust in me, as I ask you to keep diaries of your most intimate thoughts.

This month, the one new story that made all the front pages was the publication of a massive new University of Chicago survey called "Sex in America." Sex is the one subject we will always read about.

The book had plenty of statistics, touting how a staff of 220 spent seven months interviewing 3,432 people, who each answered a 120-page questionnaire.

Missing a narrative

The problem with books that have plenty of statistics is that, by Charts No. 2 or No. 3, even if the charts are sex statistics, you start skimming the book. But all that does is take you to increasingly boring Charts No. 4 or 5 or 6.

What the book was missing was a narrative - anecdotes - that put life in those charts.

And that's why I would like a few of you to keep diaries. No, not graphic X-rated descriptions, but your thoughts about sex, this subject that everybody thinks about but few discuss.

The occasional times that "Sex in America" made for compelling reading was when it left the statistics and quoted real people.

There was, for example, a novelist, an older man, who lamented having become invisible to women. The grocery clerks used to flirt with him, but now, the novelist said, "There comes a time when, like the boy putting groceries in your cart, she doesn't see you. She sees the cold cuts and the beer, the half a loaf of bread, and that's all . . . You are being screened out."

There was the 31-year-old single woman who worried that her sex life did not live up to the myths. "Sex is all around you. In the ads, in the movies. You start thinking that if you're not having great sex all the time, then there's something wrong with you," she said.

That quote is from an article the woman, Johanna Farrand, wrote for Esquire magazine. Despite their 120-page questionnaire, the authors of "Sex in America" had to use an old Esquire article, or excerpt from other published works, when looking for real-life anecdotes.

So whether you're young, middle-aged or older; male or female; single, widowed, married or kind-of-married; and have a great personal life or zero personal life, I'd like you to consider keeping a diary.

We've done something like this - your keeping personal notes - before.

Last year, based on your letters, I wrote columns profiling singles in Seattle. A few years ago I did a series about the life of a single working mother, and portions of that story were based on a diary she had kept for years.

I wrote about a middle-aged corporate manager who found he no longer was wanted in the downsizing of America. He had been unemployed for two years. I asked if he had kept a diary. He had. When I wrote the story, and wrote what this man had been thinking at particular times, I could do so with authority.

Sharing stories

People like reading about other people. I've also found that people don't mind telling their personal stories, if they believe those stories will be treated with respect.

Sometimes it takes being asked to give you a reason to do something important: Spend a little time thinking about your life.

And maybe it'll give you the chance to say what you had always wanted to say, but never had the chance.

Here's the deal:

If you participate, for the next three to six months you'll be asked to keep a diary - not of explicit sexual details - but a narrative of your life behind closed doors, to put real stories behind the statistics.

Although your names will be known to me and my editor, they will not be published.

I'd prefer you contact me in writing: Erik Lacitis, Seattle Times, P.O. Box 70, Seattle, WA 98111. My voice mail is 464-2237. In either case, include a day and evening phone number.

That's it. Now it's up to you.