Don't Stand Too Close to a Naked Man

do they do with the webs once they're done? Do they recycle? The up side is that I've not been bitten by one lately. I think they tell each other: 'Tim's okay. He could have killed a million of us. No bullshit. Did you read about the ants?'

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Men's and women's magazines are very different. What's most interesting about women's publications is their preoccupation with men:

• How to tell if he's lying.

• How to stop his snoring.

• How to make him a better person.

The articles constantly emphasize a basic philosophy: If we can't live without men, let's at least try to change them.

Women get to be embarrassed, too.

• Six exercises for your love muscle.

• Sports medicine and your love muscle.

The first was actually on the cover of Cosmo. Helen Gurley Brown scares me.

Men's magazines do not constantly give guys advice on how to deal with her period. Or on how to stop her bullshit from getting to you. Or on how to change her.

Men's magazines reveal that men tend to mind their own business. We care about women, even celebrate them. We also celebrate the geeky guy who gets the beautiful model. But that's about as far as it goes. Men's magazines don't offer one?page quizzes to see if a couple is compatible. We don't ask if a marriage can be saved. We don't offer quick makeup tips. Men's magazines are more about fashion and getting ahead in business. I think biker magazines are the only men's publications that deal seriously with women, as in 'How to make your chick look tough on your Harley.'

I have some advice for women who are absorbed in women's magazines: Read a Road and Track now and then. Get a metallic flake?paint job and some boss rims, and maybe you'll get our attention.

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Men like salty food, so you'll find us chowing down at red booth eateries like the Cock and Balls, the Cork and Cleaver, the Peach and Frog, the Slag and Bastard.

Women like anything with high?quality service. I'm not really into great service. Food is still fuel to me. The French think of food as art. Americans invented fast food. Women like restaurants where they can lunch. Women lunch. Men eat-and that's just the word you can use in polite conversation. Once, I even went to a restaurant so expensive that only the men's menu had the prices.

Of course, I only went once.

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Men don't really like to dance. If you can drag us out onto the floor, we'll do it, but we don't like it. All dancing is to men is killing time.

'When are we going home? How long do we have to do this until we can go home and do something else.' Of course, there are always spoilers-guys who really get into dancing and make the rest of us look stupid.

'Look at them dance,' my wife always says. She asks me all the time why we never go dancing anymore.

Why do I always have to remind her that my peg leg makes it a bit tough for me to do a carefree waltz?

We used to dance. When I was in college, discos popped up. I took Saturday Night Fever so seriously I even bought a white suit. At the time I had no idea that the seventies would turn out to be the cheesiest, most garish of all eras. Neck chains and more neck chains.

We learned to dance in groups. It was almost like countrymusic line dancing now. It was a great time. Instead of drinking or causing trouble, we danced. We'd come out of the club at two in the morning, sweaty, ready to sleep.

Not everyone was into disco. There were still poetry houses where many women went and talked, sang, and thought about silent desperation. But the rest of us, tired of the struggles of the sixties, just wanted to whoop it up before the eighties arrived and we had to make tons of money. We knew there was enough time for desperation later. We wanted to party while we were still too dense to realize how stupid we looked in Partridge family fashions.

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Got a second? I have a couple of fantasies I'm dying to share. I'm sure no woman's ever had this fantasy, which just goes to show you once again how different we are.

I want Scottish bodyguards, Ian and Ion and Ogor, dressed in kilts. Each would weigh three hundred pounds. We'd go to functions and these guys would say, 'Aye! You gotta get back, laddie! Timmy's coming through!'

I also wonder, just for a goof, what would happen if I had tits. A guy like me, just so I could go to the beach and make my friends uncomfortable.

'God, Tim, man, you got some nice tits.'

And you can't really tell me to put a top on, because I'm a guy. I could walk around, take off my shirt, go into a garage. The mechanic would say, 'God, you got nice tits! Has anybody ever said that? I don't know how else to say it. I'm not gay, but man, you got some tits. Nice tits.'

I don't know why I brought that up.

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As we know, even though men call it bullshitting, men just out and out lie.

One reason men lie so much is that we get forced into it. It's the truth! Our lying increases the longer we're married because our mates ask us to do such ridiculous things. They're always suggesting changes in our behavior. In their realm, behavioral changes suggested by occasional lunch partners supposedly help women get better. To men it sounds like, 'Are you trying to tell me what to do?'

For instance, women like to send thank?you notes. Women send thank?you notes for thank?you notes. 'Thank you for that thank?you note, where did you get it? Let's have lunch and talk about our thank?you notes.'

A thank?you note? Wait a minute, it was a gift, wasn't it? The Bible says you give freely. You give a gift, that's it. You don't want a Hansel?and?Gretel note back saying, 'Thanks, I got it.' This is a female ritual. They nag their husbands to do it, too.

'Send a thank?you note.'

'I don't want to.'

'Send a goddamn thank?you note.'

'I don't want to.'

'You send the damn thing, they're your friends.'

Pretty soon a guy will say, 'All right, All right, just stop yelling at me!' So you start lying, and so begins the routine: bitch, lie, bitch, lie, bitch, lie.

'Okay, I'll send one!' He's thinking: 'I'm not sending anything.'

Has it always been like that? Cro?Magnon man? Neolithic times? Valley Gwanda. Grog having a big dinner. Unngghh. Later, a shrill cry from the woman: 'Hey, who took a dump in the cave?'

'Who took a dump in the cave?' You know a man is about to lie when he repeats the question. It gives him a moment to think about it. These days it's no different.

'Honey, where's the Crockpot?'

'Our Crockpot?'

'No, the Pope's Crockpot.'

'That'd be in Italy, wouldn't it?' Always be a smart?ass if you can, because it'll take her mind off the original question. Men have to lie to get women off their backs.

Because women rely on a communication network, they abhor lying. Oh, they do it as well as men, but they hate it because it destroys the fabric of trust. Men know that, which is why they often call their lies bullshitting.

'Your grandfather did not leg wrestle with Mussolini.'

'He was just bullshitting.'

I have a friend who I don't believe has ever told the truth. Obviously the guy wasn't