Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

design my own amusement park. It will be the ultimate men's zone.

I'll call it Tim Al?Land.

Men are fascinated by, preoccupied with, and genetically predisposed toward two things: Construction and Destruction. Think of the stuff that boys do. Build and destroy. Nothing's changed.

Women are invited to Tim Al?Land, but as with most men's zones, women just don't want to go there. It smells like feet and body odor. It's not real comfortable. It's comfortable enough, if you're the kind of guy who likes spending all day on a park bench. It's also chilly all the time, and loud.

Throughout the park there are signs posting rules, which, when broken, earn you a free food ticket. The food pavilions serve the basic men's food groups: meat, carbohydrates, salt, and fat. The hot dogs are rubbery and the potato chips stale. Everything's

MEN'S ZONES

cooked on a fire and shoved into a casing. All beverages are ice cold. All the tables are tailgates. In the bathrooms there are no toilet seats. But there is a recorded voice that cycles through, 'Can't you remember to put the seat down when you're through. How hard can it be? I don't find it funny. I almost fell in. . ' It always gets a big laugh from the married guys. There aren't even any women's bathrooms.

You gotta walk through a big drill to get into Tim Al?Land.

'There's your armature right there. Your pinion's there, son. Stand by the trigger and I'll take your picture.'

Inside, you have to wear a vest with lots of pockets. If you forget yours we provide them, just like fancy restaurants when they require coats and ties and you come dressed like a bozo.

As the creator of Tim Al?Land, I suggest the ladies just leave their men at the gate and take advantage of the complete beauty makeover offered at the Tim Al?Land Ladies Annex across the street. Our motto: 'We'll make sure it takes hours. And all your girlfriends will be there.'

Tim Al?Land: Maybe I can get Disney to do this.

The park reflects the best and worst in man, and is divided into zones. The first is Constructionland.

In Constructionland, you can frame a house. Hell, you can put up a barn. You can lay brick. You can build a bridge. I don't know any guy in the world who wouldn't spend twenty?two bucks for a ticket to run a backhoe all day long. Learn how a front?end loader works. Drive a bulldozer, a grader. You get training in a big gravel pit. Seven bucketloads and you're outta there, so the next guy can get a turn. I once got a letter from some guy who wondered how I'd feel driving the largest front?end loader on the planet Earth. How would I feel lifting thirty thousand pounds of payload, putting it wherever I wanted? I got a chubby just reading the letter.

Next to the gravel pit is a special place where you can use big metal jaws hanging from a crane to try to pick up a car and put it down a little chute. Get it down the chute, it's yours. Damage it and it's yours, too. Of course you damage it!

Even though blowing up things requires the same energy and creativity as building things, Destructionland is clearly the dark side of man.

In Destructionland, a.k.a. Militaryland, men get to use all that Army stuff: machine guns, howitzers, tanks. Only this time they're real. Remember that bridge you built? Blow it up!

My wife would never get inside a tank: 'It's so hot in here, it's so cramped. You like this? This is fun for you?'

Every man would be thinking something else entirely: 'Will this go through that wall?' Soon you're going over a hill at full speed while the barrel's going sideways, firing hot steel.

'Is this the only color? Is it drafty in here? It's so musty. What's that diesel smell?'

In Militaryland you can also sit on the deck of the USS Missouri-now decommissioned-and shoot a sixty?inch gun. The shells go twenty miles and, if aimed properly, will obliterate your neighbor's house and leave yours standing.

Of course, my wife would be on the deck going, 'It's so loud!'

Me? I'd be half drunk from swilling brown liquor and yelling, 'Shoot it again!' The USS Missouri would also feature my version of skeet shooting. They fling a little imported car off an island and into the air, and you blow it to bits with a sixty?millimeter. Bang! Bang Bang! Yeah!

In Militaryland you could also take a ride on a Seawolf submarine. Hell, why not water?ski behind it? Think of it: You whiz by the dock, wearing your Sears fashion specials, and wave at everyone. No boat just you.

A couple of years ago I got to see the USS Nimitz, an aircraft carrier. I met the duty?control officer, since promoted to some important liaison job. He was from Down South, and smarter than I'll ever be. But he still sounded dumber than a ham hock.

'That boat five football feels long. Nuklar pawr'

In Militaryland, you could also ski behind the Nimitz. You and 3,800 of your favorite friends. Little heads bobbing up and down on the water, trying to keep their tips up. 'Hey, Dad!' Takes almost fifteen miles to get her going. 'Get your heads up!' Pulls everybody up. 'All right!'

There'd always be some bonehead trying to cross the wake. If he falls, everybody has to let go and wait for the captain to yell, 'Pull her round again!'

There would have to be some sort of beer pavilion for refreshments. Something with a Bavarian theme, like the Obermeyer Tent. Waitresses in halter tops and lederhosen. Beer steins with relief maps of Italy on them. We could sit around and try to figure out why the Bavarians made cups with metal caps that serve no useful purpose.

After you quench your thirst, it's into the men's room. It's all trough. Forty feet long. The trough of hell. Solid aluminum. Water sloshing through. Eighty guys lined up like horses. And the stalls: no doors, just holes in the floor, like in Italy. No woman would understand it.

Another thing women might be surprised at is that nothing in Tim Al?Land is remotely connected to sex. No way. Sex is not a man's zone. That switches men into another gear. Then they get competitive and fight. That's not cohesion, that's competition. I also figure that unless there's enough to go around, and everyone is happy with what they get-which I don't think is ever possible--then women wouldn't be a good idea. Besides, I'd want to keep all the beer waitresses to myself.

Finally, it's off to Fishingland. Full of fish things. You can see fish, touch fish, kiss fish. Even feel what it's like to be hooked.

'Hold still, kid.'

'Oh, god that hurts! Oh, sonofabitch that hurts!'

'Try that!'

'Oh, jeez, you're right, that hook really hurts. Isn't that great!' You've got to watch a bass?fishing tournament to really understand the male psyche. I watched one on TNN. It was the seminationals. The contest consisted of teams of two fat guys with double given names-Joe Bob, Ray Bob, Tim Dick-sitting on top of bar stools in a boat made of thirty?five feet of metal?flake fiberglass, powered by an 830?horsepower Mercury motor. Are bass particularly fast little fish? Are Jim Bob and Sam Bob trying to run them down? Do they have to grab them by the head? Why do the boats have to be so fast?

I flew down to Mexico with marlin fishermen once. Now these are big fish. Do you have to eat a piece of marlin to be in this club? Do fishermen even eat fish? I don't think so.

After all the fun at Tim Al?Land, it's finally time to go.

There's a bar next door to the Ladies' Annex where you can grab a beer just in case your wife's hair still isn't done.

But please, no firing the sixty?millimeter guns at the Annex.

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What excites me about men is what they can do when they direct their energy. There's nothing more impressive than the things we've built. Environmentally and socially there may be something wrong with the Hoover Dam, but if you look at it and feel the grandeur of it, and realize that men designed and built that, it's almost too breathtaking to bear. And the Grand Canyon! Took almost two years-and men did it. And how about the Chunnel, the tunnel between England and France? So what if they missed each other by a few feet trying to meet in the middle? Come on. A few feet in the scheme of things? A little water helps break up the boredom of the drive.

I'll let you in on a secret. All mistakes men make are planned. This gives us a reason to go back to where we