HOLIDAYS AND THE MALE

As we gear up for the holiday season, I figured to give you all a little heads up about what's coming in the way of your male behavior and why you should start shopping now.

Psychiatrists have noticed that men mostly get irritable and depressed this time of year, and like most of you having your Thanksgiving traumas with your family, they blame it on The Holidays. They are, of course, wrong. I just tell you this so you know you are not the only smart person to make this mistake.

If you remember what I said back on September 30 , you know that October is the annual high for testosterone and other such prostaglandins in men. These hormones give them a wonderful zest just as the leaves start turning, and romance lurks on every corner, especially around 2 in the afternoon, which is the daily high level of that horny hormone. Think of it as the high tide with the new moon.

Anyway, October, like all good things, passes and suddenly his feel-good chemicals start to go away. We girls can empathize because, what with the ebb and flow of hormones that is the glory of every female, we experience a similar sudden drop every month. The result is called PMS. We have only a teeny bit of that hair-on-your-chest stuff, so our bodies can go cold-turkey. Forty-eight hours later, we're back to our sweet, agreeable selves..

Your poor guys, their withdrawal drags out for weeks. So think of November and December as the male PMS -equivalent, only instead of three days a month, they get their whole five weeks at once. Gals, treat them as you expect to be treated on your three days, twelve times a year.

Howsomever, five or six weeks is still a long time to put up with moodiness, so The Hoidays was invented to lighten things up. Fortunately, your male is not an abstract thinker and can be distracted by beautiful packaging.

For those who doubt this, just look at the basic male visual response. A bit of blonde hair catches the light, or a ponytail goes swaying down the street, and a man forgets his name and life history in the eternal now of Her. This is why he carries identification with his name and address on it.

Or take what I call the 'Baywatch phenomenon.' No man cares if the contours he sees on the screen are biologically 'real.' They are in front of his eyes and that is enough for him. But turn off the TV, and any man worth the name knows to the depths of his objective, manly self that the pair of breasts in the bed next to him are the most beautiful in the world.

So, not being an abstract thinker, we can distract him from his misery by stringing bright, preferably blinking lights, singing perky, hopeful songs, wearing clothes with sparkles, dabbing perfume, serving tasty treats, and encouraging shopping, which dulls feelings with the frenzy of finding. That, some extra sports on the TV, a few craft projects requiring assembly, and the crisis will have passed. Soon, the testosterone will be climbing again, and he[base ']ll rise to the challenge of paying all those holiday bills like a man.

EVERY WOMAN'S PURSE

My sister was visiting Lost Angeles, so naturally, we went shopping. She was looking for a purse. We went to a half dozen stores. We saw cute purses with rhinestones and puppy dogs, classy purses in leather and linen, hip purses in bright translucent floppy plastic, tote bags, shoulder bags, hand bags. A cornucopia of choices and my sister, while appreciating the style of many, had to find the perfect purse.

There are many fabulous things a girl can buy when she just wants to shop, but shoes and purses are the ne plus ultra shopping experience because they are the most personal. I already explained about women's inner-shoeness, so I don't need to go into it again. Suffice to say that inner-shoeness, like outer-toolness in a male, is about sexual play and so there's loads of fantasy involved and thusly there are many choices. A girl like I might wear three or four different pair in the course of the day. You can't have too many shoes.

Not so with purses, because a purse is a representation of how a woman feels about herself in her womb. And that don't change from one day to the next. Changes womb-wise take much longer and require much more care.

My mother's generation, the women all had those big sturdy bags that could carry a family of four and never show signs of wear. At night they'd go out with only a tiny little clutch, 'cuz dancing at the club a woman wanted to appear young and fresh, like her purse ain't never had to do no heavy lifting yet.

Today, gals is carrying those little purses all the time. And notice, a lot of 'em ain't having no kids neither. A big family now is three, maybe even four kids. And college girls, notice they don't carry no purse at all. But before you worry that we're going the way of the Shakers, notice what they are carrying - backpacks. These new backpacks are soft and rounded, kinda like a womb when it's full. Only they are carried on the back, trailing behind like an unconcsious thought, "I know I'm going to have kids some day, but I don't want to think about it right now."

This is why a man ain't never gonna carry a purse. Designers tried to sell the idea in the seventies. No such luck. Men do carry briefcases, but a briefcase is not a purse. It is a box. And most men suffer from what I like to call 'box envy."

This goes back to Freud. He thought about what a cigar represented and he didn't think about where he keeps his cigar - in a humidor, which is a box that is temperature and moisture controlled to keep it plump. And if you've ever known a man who smokes a cigar, think about the time he lavishes on his humidor, and you will see that I am right.

Cars is boxes you can get into, start the engine by sticking in a teeny-tiny little key and jiggling it, and then drive wherever you want to go, beating the other guys in their boxes. This is why most of your channel surfers are men. They take a tool, which represents their personal apertenance, that they can finger, point it at a box, and make it jump.