She had a few things go wrong.  The weather turned bad, she was suffering from bronchitis,  had frostbite on her cheeks and a clogged oxygen mask. Yet, Sophia Danenberg climbed every step of the way.

Along the way she made history.  She is the first African American and first black woman to reach the Summit of Mt. Everest.  Other conquests include, among others, Mt. Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in 2001, Mt. McKinley in Alaska in 2005 and the Matterhorn in Switzerland in 2007, www.danenberg.org.

A theater buff, Ms. Danenberg also enjoys being actively involved in her community.  She volunteers her time with the Sierra Club’s environmental stewardship program, Inner City Outings; Special Olympics; The Hartford Marathon and Central Connecticut Bicycle Alliance.  She is a member of The Appalachian Mountain Club.

She has a degree in environmental science and public policy from Harvard University.  She received a Fulbright Fellowship to Keio University in Tokyo and is working toward a master’s in economics at the University of Connecticut.

(Interview with Flaimahmy, December 7, 2009)

FM:  You are in a very rare group, only around 2,500 people total have reached the Summit of Mt. Everest in fifty-six years.  What was your first thought when you reached the top?

SD:  My first thought when I reached the top was honestly just surprise that I was there.  Until the Summit day I hadn’t been as focused on getting to the top and so it was just somewhat surprising once I actually got there.  When I reached the Summit an ongoing problem I had had with my oxygen mask became a significant problem.  Basically, it had been clogging and it clogged completely once I was exposed to the wind that occurs when you reach the top and you don’t have anything else blocking the wind.

My first thought was being somewhat surprised to be there; my second thought was obviously just needing to fix this blocked oxygen mask and get down.  I don’t even think I would have taken a photo if it had not been for Pa Nuru (Pa Nuru was one of two Sherpas accompanying Ms. Danenburg on her climb), going, “Nooo, you’ve got to take a photo, you’ve got to take a photo!”  I was so focused on this mask problem.

FM:   How did you prepare for your climb of  Mount Everest?

SD:  It was a fairly last minute decision.  I only decided to go about two months before I flew to Kathmandu.  Quite honestly, those two months were fairly focused on logistics and administration, getting my gear together and figuring out what food;  I was on an unguided climb trying to do some research in terms of timing and pacing on how to go up.  Unlike a lot of people at Base Camp, I didn’t have access to a lot of information.  I didn’t take a laptop.  I wasn’t blogging.  I didn’t have internet access. Most of the information I had to get before I went.  Also, I had just given my job all of two months’ notice that I was leaving for three months.  There was a lot to wrap up and get ready at work.  That was most of my time.

I did pick up the workouts in those last few months but I didn’t have a lot of time to do it.  Quite frankly, I went to swimming class one more day a week and on Saturday mornings ran up and down some bleachers but I wasn’t able to do anything that fancy or that focused.  I had been climbing a lot the previous two years before Everest so I was already in very good shape and I was physically very near ready to go.  I had just gotten back from New Zealand and a climb in Australia; I was climbing a lot.

FM:  Which was more difficult, overcoming the mental or physical challenges of the climb?

SD:  There is a funny thing about Everest in comparison to a lot of other mountains you climb.  Up until Summit Day your days are very short relative to other climbs.  Other climbs you don’t have to spend as much time acclimatizing.  On other climbs you might be out there twelve hours or even longer for multiple days in a row.  That becomes psychologically very difficult.  But, most of the days on Everest are very short.

Psychologically I think it’s not very challenging in that sense.  It’s a very slow climb; you’re there for three months.  You have a lot of time to prepare.  The one thing that is difficult especially when you’re unguided, is making a final decision about your Summit window.  You’re looking at all of these weather reports.  You’re making an assessment of the route.  You’re making an assessment about your own condition, about where the teams are going, what will the routes look like, will they be crowded, what the weather window looks like…you’re making the decision to go for it.

The issue is from that point, you’ve been on the mountain for a few months and you’ve invested two months into climbing this mountain and it all pretty much comes down to that decision.  If you make the wrong decision about timing, you’re done, you’re going home without having gone to the top and maybe another year and another two months before you can try it again.

So, that was one of the more difficult things to do, to make the decision of when to go to the Summit, to make that assessment.  You have a lot of support on Everest.  You spend a lot of time acclimatizing.  You work your way up.  Even if you want to climb Kilamanjara, you really don’t spend a lot of time acclimatizing.  People tend to go up really fast.

With Everest you really have to take your time because mistakes and problems become fatal.  Unlike Kilamanjara you can possibly make an error and still make it down.  On Everest you really have to take your time so that you can make it a very manageable climb.  Summit Day is very very long.  In my case I started at 11:00 p.m. at night and I reached the Summit sometime between 7:00 and 8:00 a.m.  It was a long day.  A lot of people will leave at 9:00 p.m. and reach the Summit between noon and 1:00 p.m taking twelve to fourteen hours.

I wasn’t on that pace.  Psychologically, it would have been hard for me to be out there that long.  Summit Day is a very long day; it’s very difficult.  You are dealing with an altitude that you’ve never been to in your life.  At the same time, it is just the one day.  You are working off of adrenaline, motivation and enthusiasm that you are going to reach the Summit.

FM:  You carried your own gear, you pitched your own tent and you made most of your own decisions.  Were you ever afraid?

SD:  I did carry a lot of my own gear, but I was with a commercial program where it was a bunch of people climbing alone, together.  For example, our camp was maybe five tents and that was shared by twenty-plus climbers and forty-plus Sherpas.  Clearly, we weren’t all going to be there at the same time.  So, you kind of get up there and you’re all using the same gear.  It splits the effort; you don’t have to take as much stuff up with the assumption that you’re not all there at the same time.

Our team did have some Sherpa support.  The difference was that we were unguided so we weren’t actually walking with a guide and there wasn’t a guide actually making decisions for us.  That was really significant for this type of climb because this was the first time they had ever done anything like that.  It was somewhat difficult decision-making from a mountaineering perspective.

That being said, I had a moment of nervousness but I don’t think I was really scared ever because I always felt completely free to turn around and just go back.  So, whatever I did I felt pretty good about it.  I didn’t really ever feel that I was pushing it beyond the bounds of something I was comfortable with.  I think this is because it wasn’t done in a very public way.  I wasn’t blogging; I wasn’t sending out press releases.

I think psychologically it made me very careful.  If I turned around and went back really nobody would know about it.  Had I never actually gotten to the top, other than my friends, family and co-workers nobody would have even known I tried.  It wasn’t notable because I didn’t have sponsor support.  I didn’t deal with press.  I wasn’t blogging.  It meant that every one of my decisions was concretely made with no bias toward pushing it beyond what I thought I was capable of.  I actuallly felt pretty good the whole time.

Making a decision about the Summit Day was really tough and in fact, we ran into some weather.  Earlier that night we had made a decision not to go up.  The next day we were going to go down.  Between 7:00 p.m. and 10:30  p.m. the weather cleared.  At 11:00 p.m. we made the decision to go for it.  I did have a moment at the Balcony which is about half-way from Camp Floor to the Summit.

We had left with a lot of people.  Most of the people left when we did.  We managed to pass a couple of people on the way up.  We were independent so we weren’t really climbing together so we weren’t sticking together.  We got to the Balcony and up to that point I hadn’t really turned around.  At the Balcony I looked down and realized I couldn’t really see anybody.  It was dark and I should have been able to see people’s headlamps.  I didn’t see any headlamps coming up.  It made me think that everyone had turned around.  I didn’t realize that we had gotten so far ahead that we just couldn’t see their headlamps.  That seemed almost unimaginable to me.   I thought everyone else had turned around, that  maybe they knew something that we didn’t know, maybe they had heard something about the weather, a storm…so that was a little bit scary.  We did radio down to Base Camp.

They said that there was no report of a storm coming in but that we were in the middle of one.  We had basically walked out of the storm; from where we were standing it was completely clear.  We could see the stars; we could see the peaks of the mountains peeking up above the clouds and we could see the storm below us.  We knew that we had climbed out of the worst part of the storm.  There was nothing else predicted to come in.  We were pretty much good to go.  It was pretty scary for a moment but once we made the decision to keep going I felt perfectly comfortable to keep plugging along.

The good thing about the Sherpas is that you are making your own decisions about the climb, about going forward, about going back.  But, if you turn back, they are going to come with you because they are hired to be your climbing companion.  They don’t make the decisions but if you decide to go back they will go with you.  If you decide to go up and they don’t think it’s safe they can turn around and leave you.  If they think you are making an unsafe decision to go to the Summit, they don’t have to risk their own safety to go with you.  They can make the decision to leave you.  If you’re going up, they can make their own decision to go with you or not go with you based on what they believe is safe.  They believed it was safe because we all went up together.  That also helped instill a little confidence.  They did have a chance to say no and to go down and they didn’t.  They thought it was safe because we had walked out of the storm and it was clear above us.

FM:  Is there a common thread of experience that you’ve found in climbing the mountains you’ve scaled?  For example, was there a difference in how you felt climbing Kilimanjaro in Tanzania in 2001 as compared to Mt. Everest?

SD:  It is all relative.  When I think back on Everest I don’t think of it as a particularly difficult climb in terms of the actual climbing.  It is an extremely dangerous climb but I don’t think of it as particularly difficult.  A lot of it is that I had climbed a lot before I climbed Everest.  At the time that I climbed Kilimanjaro in 2001 if I had climbed Everest I would have thought that was a very difficult climb.

Each mountain I climbed added a degree of difficulty, whether it was a higher altitude or even if it was lower, maybe adding something more technical.  For example, I climbed Mt Kenya after I climbed Mt. Kilimanjaro.  Mt. Kenya is a lot more technical climb.  I didn’t actually get to the top because of a storm.  That was a climb that required a different skill set than climbing  a very high altitude hike.

Every climb is building a little bit.  When I climbed Everest it was a logical next step.  I think if it hadn’t been, then that company would not have let me go.  I think with each climb there is a building and learning new skills and getting stronger.  When I climbed Everest I had climbed in a period of two years more than I had in my entire life.  I cannot imagine climbing that much in a two year period ever again.

I was really in the best shape that I could be in, in terms of the strength you need for climbing.  I think if I had started six months before I could have been in slightly better shape and it would have made my life slightly easier.  With each one there has always been a bit more of a challenge.

The big issue with Everest  relative to a lot of climbs is it was higher than the other climbs.  I was on the mountain for an extremely long period of time.  I had never done anything that was that dangerous.  I’d never been on a mountain where even the slightest mistake could prove fatal.   The other mountains that I was on, there was something slightly more forgiving about them…things that people do all the time, for example, you drop something…on Everest if you drop something, that could prove fatal.  If you drop a glove you could end up losing that hand.  In other climbs I’ve been on that just wasn’t the case.  You could turn around, you could get off, you could do something to compensate for some things or some of the little mistakes you’ve made.                   

FM: What do you think about mainstream media not covering your accomplishment as the first African American to reach the Summit?

SD:  I didn’t send out a press release.  I always like to point that out.  Most of the people who are given coverage for their climbs of Everest, they got themselves coverage.  They were absolutely sending out letters saying, “Look at my blog…follow this.”  There are a lot of people who climb Everest who don’t do that.  In fact, most people who climb Everest don’t do that and we don’t get any media attention due to it.

It gives it a different feel when you’ve only got these few people being covered and they’re the people being sought out for media attention, especially people who are being sponsored.  They need that media attention in order to basically pay back their sponsor.  That’s why they seek a whole lot of media attention.  I wasn’t being sponsored.  I wasn’t blogging.  I didn’t send out a press release.  I guess I didn’t have any expectation of getting any media coverage.  I did one interview which started a little bit of the media coverage.  That writer and my nephew are friends and were best friends since they were little.  That’s how he heard about it and that’s how the first newspaper article got out, it was basically through my family.  If it hadn’t been for that I don’t think I would have gotten the little bit that I did.

Somebody at work was trying to get the main newspaper in Hartford to write something.   They declined, I think because one of their writers was writing a book on Everest.  I never contacted them.  There were other people who were disappointed that my local paper didn’t cover it.  In the end they did do a little article about it.  A columnist from some other paper submitted an article independently.

I was a delegate to the Democratic National Convention and one of the current writers was covering the Convention, thought it was interesting and did a link that I was the first African American to climb Mt. Everest and that I was there as a delegate for Obama.  He wrote a little article about it.  There were actually a couple of little articles in the paper about it.  I never thought anything about it.  I was interviewed by nine year olds.  My friends did some things for their school papers.  I didn’t really court the attention so I didn’t think anything about not getting it.

FM: Do you feel now that you are a role model for girls and young women who would like to become mountaineers and climbers?  What would you tell a young girl or woman who was interested in following in your footsteps; how could they get started?

SD:  As far as climbing, I usually tell people that anybody can do this.  I mean this extremely literally.  I really mean that any single one of you if you wanted to climb Mt. Everest you could climb Mt. Everest.  If I’m speaking to ten years olds I say that if in ten to fifteen years you get in shape and you want to climb Mt. Everest you can.  If you can figure out how to raise the money; the money is probably one of the bigger challenges.  One of the more impressive things when I was on Everest was how many of the people came about their funding.  That was interesting.  Literally, any of you guys can do this.

Everest, especially being not a very technical mountain to climb, really has a lot more to do with preparation, endurance and strength that can be built.  You can develop it.  It’s not a type of strength you have to be born with.  So if you stay in shape and run; you’ve got to do those things.  If you’re watching video games or eating junk food it’s not going to happen.   But, if you are fairly strong you could really do this.

When I do speak to kids usually it’s a little bit less about climbing and especially after I was a Convention delegate, it was another topic where it was very similar.  Whether it’s climbing Everest or ending up as a Delegate to the Convention; all of these things, there was sort of a process to doing it.  I just kind of figured it out…if you wanted to do that, how would you do that.  The way that started was I was raised with this belief that most things are possible, that most things you can probably do.

Before I ever dismiss any idea of something that I might want to do I go and figure it out.  I have figured out that I will never be the Queen of England, I wasn’t born into the family; I’d have to marry one of those guys and that’s not going to happen.  I will never be a rock star; I don’t have any musical talent.  I’ll never be a professional basketball player.  I was really good at  basketball but then I didn’t grow and everybody else did.  I’m a little bit too short.  So I think there are more things possible than people imagine or think of.   A lot of times people stop themselves by believing it’s too big or impossible or too difficult or somehow out of their reach.

In fact, what you find is a lot of these things are within reach.  If, for example, you want to become a convention delegate then start researching it, how other people got there, what did they do, what is the process.  If you want to climb Everest just go and figure it out.  I think what you will find is if, for example, they want to be a part of Doctor’s Without Borders in Africa, to do research on satellites, they want to be an astronaut, that those things are actually very possible.  There are certain things that will make it more likely than not that you’ll become an astronaut.  Go and figure it out.  Go do it.  Don’t limit yourself with assumptions.  That’s usually the message that I try to give them.

FM:  What is it that you have not done that you would love to do?

SD:  All kinds of things!  There are places that I’d love to travel to.  There are some mountains that I’d like to climb.  There are some other mountains in the Himalayas that I’d like to climb.  I kind of think that whatever the next thing is it’s gonna be something I haven’t thought of now.  They tend to come to me.  If you’d asked me ten years ago, I wouldn’t have believed I’d be in democratic politics.  If you had asked me fifteen years ago about climbing, I probably would have said, “Not that interested.”

Something will come to me.  At the moment I’ve moved to Seattle so that I can be more of a weekend climber and settle down a little bit.   I think there are a lot of things that people have done, they’ve had children, they have families, that I haven’t done.  For me, if I do those things that would be new and exciting for me.  So, whatever my next thing is might not draw as much attention as these last couple of things.  It will be something  that’s very special and important to me.

There are some alarming statistics:   In 2006, more than 80% of Asian American children, nearly 75% of White American children, and almost 70% of Latino American children were being raised in a home with both parents,  but fewer than 33% of African American children were living in a two-parent household.  Seventy percent of  African American professional women are single.

The book is filled not just with statistics, however.  It is a fun and easy book to read with real conversations among real people having open and honest discussions about themselves.  They are revealing conversations that we can all relate to.  Even Hill found something he had not anticipated when he began The Conversation, happiness, “I am happier now…than I’ve ever been with any other woman.”

Hill graduated Magna Cum Laude from Brown University; received a J.D., Cum Laude, from Harvard Law School; (he and President Obama were classmates) and received a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.

Hill is an outstanding film, stage and television actor, currently starring in CSI New York.  He is also a member of the oldest intercollegiate Greek letter organization in the country for African Americans, Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity.

(Interview with Flaimahmy, November 6, 2009)

FM:  In your most recent book, The Conversation, How Black Men and Women Can Build Loving, Trusting Relationships, you use the expression “man up.”  What does that mean?

HH:  “Man up” is directed towards men and I believe that we as men have to find the courage to step up, man up, so to speak, to have the discussion with other men when  we know that they are doing things that are foul and wrong.  It’s very difficult, I’m just going to be very honest; it’s very difficult for women to check men in certain situations and men have to have the courage to start checking each other.

We have a tendency as men to basically turn a blind eye, to say “Yeah, that’s just his business,” even when we know our brother, our friend, our man is doing wrong.  Whether its mistreatment of a woman or women, whether he’s not dealing with his child or children or whether he’s just not acting right, the way he dresses; it’s as simple as that.  Sometimes it’s just about, ”You need to pull up your pants and start wearing some clothes that are appropriate.”  We have to start holding each other to task.

I think that too many of us abdicate the responsibility and say, “You know what, that’s just his business and I’m going to stay out of his business.”  We are at a crisis point in our community and in terms of our relationships.  We can’t afford to just let folks say, “Oh, it’s their business.”  We’ve got to start getting in people’s business and manning up and that’s what that means.

FM:  Would you make a distinction between what “man up” means for a man in his late teens to mid-twenties as compared to a man in his mid-twenties to late thirties?

HH:  No, there’s no real distinction.  It’s acting appropriately or acting inappropriately, I don’t care what age you are.  Now, there are things that we do; I’m not talking about ladling expectations on someone.  I’m saying that if you are a teen and you become a parent and you are in your thirties and you become a parent you still are a father.  Now, there are different things you may have to do to navigate your life but there are certain responsibilities that you have to take on in either case.  It’s not about drawing distinctions in terms of age, it’s about actually showing what is appropriate behavior and what is not appropriate behavior.

I’m not attempting to represent myself in any way as the person who is the arbiter of what “good” or “bad” behavior is.  I’m just saying that we as men who have friends who are men know when our friends, no matter what age we are or they are, are acting foul and wrong, then we have to start discussing it with them rather than turning a blind eye.

FM:  While writing your book you came to realize that love is a choice, that we choose to be in love or out, committed or not, vulnerable or not.  What prompted these realizations?

HH:  I didn’t even know the book was going to be called The Conversation when I set out to do all the interviews.  I interviewed over three hundred different people; some people  who had been married for over seventy years; some people who had been multiple divorced, some people devoutly single, some people who were dating, some people who were newly married, all over the map and certain strains started to come up as you’re talking to people and certain realizations came up.  For me the conversations that the book refers to exist on three levels.

First, the conversation with yourself, having an open, honest, vulnerable conversation with yourself; looking in the mirror and really being honest.  Second, the conversation with partners or potential partners and not sending a representative but again being completely honest and vulnerable.  And, third, conversation with community and family, the greater conversation.  Those are the three levels of honest conversations and we all have to have that.

The idea of choice and choosing, that you choose to love yourself, conversation number one.  You choose to love partners, potential partners, conversation number two and you choose to love your community and family, conversation number three.  Those are choices and how you act within those choices I really do believe begins with looking in the mirror.

FM:  You quoted an alarming statistic.  In 2006 less than 33 percent of Black American children were living in two-parent households, while just forty years earlier, in 1966, 84% lived in two-parent households.  What do you think we can do to change this?

HH:  Well, that is what my whole book is about, we have to have “the conversation.”  We have to start talking cross-gender, openly and honestly.  We have to start communicating across gender. What I found in doing the research for the book is that a lot of women speak amongst themselves about a lot of these issues and a lot of things that are going on.  And, to be quite honest they pass a lot of misinformation amongst themselves.

I was astounded how little most women really know about men and what men want even though they believe they do.  That’s what’s crazy.  And, the same holds true for men.  We don’t talk as much about these things but when we do it’s amongst each other.  When men and women tend to talk about these things it’s usually between men and women who have some measure of sexual negotiation going on.  Either there is a hope for a future or there was a past.  That information is oftentimes colored by that.  The way we are going to change that horrible data point is by communicating.  And, that’s not the only one, 70% of Black professional women are single.

You know, we get married the least although we have the highest divorce rate, which makes it doubly bad.  There is something going on between Black men and Black women that is not right, not healthy and we have to start talking about it by starting to get on common ground and learn more and respect each other more and build friendships.  It’s not so clear to me that we are even friends anymore.  That’s the most dangerous thing.

FM:  Your grandfather had an expression, “If you don’t want to get shot, don’t go where the bullets are.”  Tell us about your “bullet” territory, in particular,  and what for some men in general could be their “bullet” moment.

HH:  “Bullets” is understanding a bigger picture and what your bigger goals are.  You know we are all human so we’re all going to make mistakes; we’re all going to do things that if we had hindsight or if we had more information or if we weren’t in the situation we were in we would have made a different choice.  So therefore there is an idea of, “If you don’t want to get shot, don’t go where the bullets are,” that tend to not put yourself in situations that aren’t in line with your goals or purpose.

If your purpose is to, for instance, be faithful and be in a relationship and build a strong foundation and trust then don’t put yourself in situations where that’s tough.  For me, for instance, I know when I’m in public with someone I’m fine.  They can be flirting with me, whatever, they can say things…I’m good because it’s public.  But, in private space I know that I’m susceptible so if I don’t want to end up doing something that I don’t want to do with somebody I shouldn’t invite them to come have a glass of wine at my house or I shouldn’t invite them up to my hotel room and think we’re just going to watch a movie.  These are extreme examples, but I’m just trying to give you an example; I know where my “bullets” are.

I can call someone up and say, “Hey, would you like to meet downstairs at the pub or the bar and have a glass of wine?”  I know I’m fine.  I’m not going to do anything that I didn’t want to do.  But, in a private setting I may want to, but that’s just me.  I have to know where my “bullets” are.  There are some guys I know, they can’t even meet somebody for a drink and they’re in trouble already because their “bullets,” that’s where they go.  There are guys I know, and women, they could actually have a nice glass of wine with someone in private and know that there is no chance that something would jump off or happen because that’s just not where their head is and they know nothing is going to happen.  Everybody has their own barometer so if you don’t want to get shot don’t go where the bullets are.  You have to know where your bullets are.

FM:  You have a chapter called Status vs. Potential: Looking at the Obamas in which you meet many young Black men who state that they “want a woman like Michelle” and many young Black women want to “meet a together brother like Barack.”  Tell us about status versus potential.

HH:  Well, I hope that folks read the book because I can’t break it down as well as I’ve broken it down in the book.  Basically the idea is that many of us walk around saying the type of person that we want to date is some variation of, “I want someone who is on my level,” or I want this or I want that.  However, if you really look at a relationship like the Obamas when they first met they weren’t on anywhere near the same level.

Most of the women I interviewed for my book didn’t know what I was talking about when I gave them the scenario that they would have taken a pass on dating a future president because they wanted to date someone on a level of status right now rather than dating potential and the idea of what can we do together, what are we going to be able to build together, rather than what do you have right now or what you do not have right now.

You have to remember that our First Lady was the primary breadwinner in their relationship even for the first several years of their marriage.  When she first met him she was a very successful attorney.  When they first started to date he had a hole in his car, didn’t want to take a job and wanted to write a book.  She was a very successful attorney in a private law firm making a six-figure salary.  There was a huge disparity in terms of their level.

There was also something that came up  in the book called the 5/95 rule, or 5/95 paradox and speaks to the same issue, that 95% of  the women are trying to date 5% of  the men and vice-versa, 95% of the men are trying to date 5% of the women.  That’s why we run around saying that there’s a lack and a problem or issue.  There always will be an issue if you eliminate a huge number of individuals as potential partners.

FM:  Can a man really “smell the scent of desperation coming off  of a woman,” and are men really revealing their “true character all the time?”

HH:  Yes and no, I mean those points that you are talking about are points that are made throughout the book by other folks in the book, some of which I agree with and some of which I don’t.  I can be very clear and tell you that both of the examples you just gave me are examples of, in my opinion, us sending our representatives.  Many of us if there is some measure of desperation in finding someone, that’s fear based action and for me fear is false evidence appearing real, fear that we won’t find somebody so we are going to act a certain way to try to convince someone they should be with us.

The same thing holds true for men.  We try to act with some bravado, try to act cooler than we really are and all these different things trying to impress a woman or get a women to sleep with us or whatever and both of us are protecting ourselves so much by sending our representative rather than having the courage to just be vulnerable and be open and really be ourselves and laugh more, enjoy each other’s company more and have the courage to build a friendship first.

I think the most important thing in my book is the ”AFI” piece, attraction. friendship,  intimacy in that order.  Most of us go from attraction to intimacy and then try to build a friendship.  If we really focused on the friendship piece in a real way, in a real joyful way and not saying friendship in an I’m going to withhold sex way.  You’ve got to hear this very carefully.  It’s not about withholding sex.  That’s the way many people hear it.  It’s about building a fun friendship…two different things…two different approaches.

So many women, for instance, when I was doing the research for the book, weren’t able to tell me what men like to do to have fun.  In other words, I’d ask them what do they do on a date and what do they like to do and they would respond, ”What I like to do is I like to go bowling and I like going to the movies.”  I would sit there and say, “OK, ok, that’s interesting.”  I’d say, “How many times have you seen guys get together amongst each other and the guys say, ‘Hey Steve man let’s go bowling tonight; Hey Steve let’s go to the movies tonight?”  Guys don’t do that.  Why?  Because guys don’t do that together, because we don’t want to; it’s no fun.  What do we do?   “Yo, let’s go catch the game; let’s go down to the sports bar.”If you want to have a fun date why don’t you say, “Hey, let’s go get some beer; let’s go watch the game?”

That’s a very different thing.  Very few women do that because women oftentimes don’t put themselves in the shoes of guys.  Vice versa for guys.  There are a lot women who enjoy getting manicures, pedicures, getting massages and things…a guy going up to a woman and saying, “Hey, instead of going out to dinner, how about I take you to this great spa and we do a spa day?”  Wow, ok, that’s interesting.  We have to think about what each other’s likes and  then go out and have fun with it and enjoy the process.  So often we impose our own thing onto things rather than actually taking the other person under consideration.

FM:  What is the biggest thing that men and women do not realize about each other?

HH:  That when you peel back all of the layers and you get down to the fundamentals, both of us fundamentally truly want the exact same thing.

FM:  Of course, since this is Flaimahmy Magazine I have to ask you, “What do you think about Fly Mommies?

HH:  Well, I’ve had the pleasure of dating incredible moms and I think that mothers are beautiful and amazing.  My mother, she’s beautiful and amazing so I celebrate and support any Fly Mommy. The woman that I date in the book, Nichole, is a mom.  I hope folks check that out and your readers actually go ahead and read the book and enjoy The Conversation. I hope they’ll go to follow me on Twitter and let me know what their thoughts are about the book.

Check me out on Twitter because that’s the main thing I’m using these days to keep in touch with folks who are out there around the country and around the world.  So please send them over to Twitter.com/hillharper and we’ll stay in touch.