Orange County had long been dogged by images of rich and plastic people, the stereotypes fueled by the "Real Housewives" franchise with its rotating cast of socialites, their lives a whirl of feuds, shopping trips, personal trainers, lovers, plastic surgeons.
What restrictions do exist tend to protect living people mentioned in a writer's archive -- say, friends who have written personal letters, or lovers whose names turn up in diaries.
This was less about grand world-building and more about voyeuristic flashbulb pops into New York's many micro-universes: the hotel room of a harried personal assistant, two lovers freaked out by a scurrying kitchen mouse, a Central Park bird watcher whose chemotherapy treatments leave her unable to stomach food, the life cycle of a crowded Williamsburg Airbnb.
Under his direction (and in his field of personal influence they were lovers at the time), she took on the turbulent passions of the world around her while expressing them minimally, only occasionally bursting out in exuberant rounds of playacting that seem mainly for her characters' own benefit, shows of artificial emotion meant to prove to herself an emotionalism that she doesn't actually feel.
In the eight years since, the law has been invoked to protect drug dealers and gang members from murder charges, and it's allowed personal disputes over lovers, possessions, and yes, trash bags, to escalate into bloody murder scenes without consequences.
His former personal assistant (and lover) has claimed that Mr Delbono, who denies breaking the law, spent public money on her.
Then there's the Large Tuna Melt at sandwich chain Quizno's (1,740 calories), and the 9-inch Personal PANormous Meat Lover's pizza (1,590) at Pizza Hut, owned by Yum! Brands, which loads four kinds of meat onto a single pie.
Aptly titled "Snog," it features up-close-and-way-too-personal shots of lovers rounding first base, all tongues and prickly face hairs and smudged lipstick.
My own experience suggests that there isn't a single trans person who, when asked, can't immediately recall instances of being concerned for her or his personal safety, job, lover, or family.
E-mail, it turns out, can hold many secrets, from the names of personal physicians and illicit lovers to the identities of whistle-blowers and antigovernment activists.
But Morton-Smith never loses sight of Oppenheimer's mix of missionary zeal and personal detachment: he swaps lovers as casually as if changing suits and, when recruited by the military to work on the Manhattan project at Los Alamos, sheds his communist past like a snake sloughing its skin.
