The first time I saw an erect penis it was crammed down my throat before I could say “Ew.” I was a reckless kid who nobody loved, so I agreed to go behind the neighborhood bowling alley with an awful redheaded boy, hoping he would let me wear his Saint Christopher medal. His name was either Kenny or Ted; both names make me gag.

A couple of years later, still reckless, I hitchhiked everywhere, and the guys who picked me up were usually friendly, even the ones who managed to unzip their pants while driving. Suddenly, out sprang their dicks and the offer of a dollar to touch “it.” There was no way of guessing which guy might do this. Well dressed or slob, jalopy or brand new Cadillac, it was a crap shoot. No one ever stopped me from getting out. They were disgruntled, the ones with their dicks out, but they handled their disappointment pretty well.

Now, with Louis CK in mind, I have to wonder what drives men to show their dick to women who’ve expressed no interest in seeing it. In Louis CK’s case, the idea was obviously to shock or cause discomfort. But that seems like a genuine perversion. It’s hard to believe most men think of their penises this way.

But since women don’t go around forcing people to look at their genitals, I think it’s fair to call it a Man thing. What is behind this behavior? I tried thinking about it from a Freudian perspective. Maybe, when little boys first see their dad’s penis, they are overwhelmed by its size. This instills a worry about their own tiny penis. Will they ever measure up? The worry permeates their entire existence. Then once their own penis is full grown, they feel a need to say, “LOOK! ” They are proud, but still there’s that fundamental insecurity. All women represent Mommy, as we know. So he’s saying, “See, Mommy? I’m as big as Dad!”

No? Not buying that? How about a primal fear that the dick will somehow disappear. They have to keep presenting it for approval. It’s still there! Yay!

Or, is it just the physical version of mansplaining? Instead of clobbering you verbally with their superiority,  they want you to shut up and look at their dick. “Get a load of this, sister!” It’s an explanation that needs no explanation.

Having seen my share of penises, both willingly and otherwise, I think I have a healthy appreciation of them. One in particular, as I am happily married. Scrolling through Tumblr, when a dick pops up on my dashboard, I admit to feeling slightly offended. My feeling is mostly, “Go away, I didn’t ask for you.” I wonder if teenage girls are immune to images of dicks? From the sound of it, dick pics are a form of communication among our youth. Maybe when these teens grow up, the men will be less likely to use their dicks Louis CK-style, as an instrument of horror.

I believe I speak for most women when I say, Please keep your penis in your pants unless we specifically ask to see it and/or consensual sex is about to take place. Is that so hard, ahem?

Men, can you enlighten us on the mystery of your show and tell behavior? Ladies, your thoughts?

No one warned me about the Weiner documentary.

I expected a fun, lurid, behind-the-scenes look at Anthony Weiner’s well-earned fall from grace. But it’s deeply depressing, on every level.

I had hoped to get over it, but now he’s back, and who knows for how long. What did we do to deserve Weiner? Will we ever be free of him?

The first thing that comes across in the movie is how physically unattractive he is. Believe me, even if he were a saint, you would be struck by the physical aspect.

Frail and short, he is also encumbered by an enormous nose, the type that must have brought savage teasing throughout childhood and adolescence.

The name and the nose combined make a lethally unfortunate burden. You feel his anger and resentment in all his machinations.

He is rude to his wife on nearly every occasion, and her silent misery hangs over the film like a shroud. Why is she with him, you have to wonder. By all accounts an intelligent, competent woman, she seems like she’s like the victim of an ancient curse. She married a bad-tempered frog who just keeps getting froggier instead of turning into something good.

Weiner seems gripped by a need to show the world that he has the right stuff. He appears to believe that he deserves power as well as respect, but he goes around alienating everyone around him, including his idealistic supporters. He can’t accept that people will draw the line after enough of his lies and betrayals.

Of course he is a pathological flasher and liar! He is a walking lesson in what happens if your name is Weiner and you have a gigantic nose. What the fuck does anyone expect?

Here’s what we need to know: Why did Huma marry him and stay for so long? And why didn’t Hillary offer Huma the benefit of her experience?

I’m afraid to find out.

Thanks for nothing, James Comey, you fucking cunt.

Thoughts?

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I don’t want a t-shirt with holes, but I have around 50 of them anyway. All the holes are in the same place: on the front, a little below the waist.

Last year, a friend told me that she had the same problem and I was amazed by her analysis of it: The holes were caused by the zippers of our low-cut jeans. Looking back, I can’t believe I went along with this. It sounded so brilliant at the time, and it was nice to solve the mystery.

At some point, I realized that it wasn’t about zippers. More and more of my t-shirts sprouted the same tiny holes. And the holes are multiplying but staying roughly in the same place. Sitting in the car with my husband yesterday, I noticed a hole in one of my newer t-shirts and cursed. I explained the phenomenon, and joked that maybe it was my belly button. Maybe I have a toxic belly button! My son suggested that maybe it emits radioactive waves.

I decided to google “why are there holes in my t-shirts,” and landed on a forum where people discussed the holey t-shirt mystery. Their theories ranged from logical to absurd. Seatbelts, third-world shoddiness, kitchen counters, harsh laundry soap, the theories were offered up and then shot down by other commenters.

Finally, I came to this revelation:

Silverfish. They eat ONLY cotton and similar vegetable based natural fabrics such as rayon, they especially eat clothing that hasn’t been recently washed. They eat mostly around the bottom of the shirt because of oils and dirt from your belly button sticking to the fabric.

The “oils and dirt” from my belly button?!? Silverfish?!?

I googled silverfish and found an eco friendly product to kill them with. I can’t even think about my belly button.

Beyonce celebrated her 30th birthday on her yacht in Italy, with family and a few close friends. Her close friend Gwyneth (??) was seen giving Beyonce an envelope.   Look how happy she is after she opens it!

I need to know what was in that envelope.*

Suggestions?

*My friend Maxine said “I would like to think it was a specially penned poem.” If you agree with Maxine, please approximate the poem.

ASK A MAN #101: ABOUT HANDSHAKES

“When they met one another, there was an uneasy moment as each watched the other’s right hand. If it went to his sword or gun, there was a battle, but if it went to his hat it was a salute of friendship or respect.”

–The Boy Scout Handbook

Doubt and uncertainty will get you killed. An indecisive driver is more likely to cause a collision than that jerkhole who just deliberately cut you off (if you’re reading this while driving, your GPS told me to tell you to unfasten your seatbelt, accelerate, and make an immediate hard left turn exactly… now). If the month-old milk in your fridge smells like it might have gone bad, don’t drink it until you’ve tricked someone else into drinking it. If you’re not sure that the firearm you wear to bed is loaded and the safety is off then the Chinese have already invaded your home, devoured your pets, and you and your family have become slave labor in one of those sweatshops where the little letters that appear on computer screens are assembled one pixel at a time. In a social situation, the handshake provides a shorthand determination of who’s who and how steady or shaky their character is.

But the question at hand is how do guys know which handshake to use and, when it’s your standard fist bump pas de bourrée, whose fist is on top? It turns out that the top fist is determined by an extremely complex equation developed by the heretical 14^th century Portuguese mathematician Aperto de Mão. Fortunately the equation with all its arcane symbols can be summed up as “who hast initiated ye fist bump is on top, unless ye initiator is a dwarfe or ye totally precocious baby.”

As for how we determine exactly which handshake to use, the magic of the Y chromosome has endowed men with a specialized gland that emits and detects identifying pheromones.

This gland  coupled with our ability to recognize types of headgear allows us to know in advance of physical contact whether the other fellow is a Lakers fan, a Freemason, a gang banger, or French, and we adjust our handshake/aim accordingly. Scoffers: this is science, dammit, and cannot be disproven by any method known to Man.

So the next time you see a couple of bro’s or homeys engaging in complicated modes of manual hierarchical determination, remember that you are witnessing just one beautiful thread in the grand tapestry of snips, puppy dog tails, farts, and dick jokes that makes being a dude so totally totally awesome. Question answered.

 ©  2011 Anthony Robert Russo

One of the exciting new features you can look forward to here will be the convenience of A Man to answer your questions regarding male behavior. The feature will be called Ask a Man, and written by my friend Romeo, who is not only male but has served in our armed forces, drives a truck and currently brandishes a forbidding mohawk.

Romeo has always shown a willingness, however reluctant, to answer all my questions and now he will answer yours, too.

Here are the ones that bother me most, or let’s just say they mystify me the most:

When two men greet each other with a handshake, how do they know which kind of handshake to use? If it’s the fist on top of fist, how do they know whose fist goes on top? How do they know whether it’s going to be just an ordinary handshake or a special Bro Shake? What is the signal?

My second question is, why are men so fucking touchy? They can’t take any direct criticism, obviously, but anything that might remotely be construed as some kind of criticism makes them get testy. While they love to open sentences with “You ought to try…” or “Why do you always…” it is strictly verboten to address a man like that unless you want him to snap at you or sulk for an hour. Why are they so thin-skinned??

While I await Romeo’s lucid explanation of these mysteries, feel free to submit your own question for him in the comments. I am looking at this coming Friday as the launch date for Ask a Man.

I signed up at Twitter, initially, to follow Mrs. Palin and Amanda Palmer.   I couldn’t handle the former but the latter rewarded me with a free concert last night.

Then, I started tweeting just to annoy people. When that didn’t go anywhere, I forgot about Twitter. Then I came back and tried again.

Now, I have 124 followers but sadly for them I have nothing to say. Nontheless, I go there a couple of times a day and torture myself by scrolling through pointless nonsense tweeted by people I don’t know and mostly wouldn’t want to know.

Why are we tweeting, everyone? Whatever the motives that are driving Twitter, it can’t be good for civilization.

Here are my limited observations so far:

1. People want you to know what they ate.
2. People need to communicate every idle scrap of thought that pops into their heads.
3. People like to LOL at one another.
4. People think they derive status from their Tweeting associations.
5. People use Twitter instead of personal email, in order to have an audience.
6. The more people you follow, the more time-consuming it is to find anything interesting.
7. Kanye West is a big deal.
8. It’s important to follow another rapper and then retweet their illiterate musings.

BUT! On a positive note, Twitter has taught me this:

9. It’s fun to read people’s tweets as they watch “X Factor” especially if you’ve never seen it.
10. Rumi Neely is actually smart, witty and gracious. I like her! I stand corrected.

Twitter is adding to the clutter I’m stuffing my brain with on a daily basis and I know it’s time to be more selective. I’ve unsubscribed to a million mailing lists with ten million more to go.   I’m finding that I know too much about Lanvin for Target and too little about world affairs.   It’s going to be tough to unlearn my bad Internet habits. We’ll see how far I get.

Okay. Now explain Twitter.

I just saw “Valentino: The Last Emperor” for the first time, and of course it is delightful. The love story, the pugs, the hair, the dresses, the excess! My favorite moment was Valentino’s emotional proclamation:

“An evening dress that reveals a woman’s ankles when she is walking is the most disgusting thing I have ever seen.”

But when Andre Leon Talley appeared, I wondered anew, What is the point of him?

Watching him in the September movie, I felt he provided comic relief but beyond that, I don’t get it. Is he some kind of mascot for Anna Wintour?

His writing is nothing special, his personal style is grotesque, he fucked up Jennifer Hudson that year at the Oscars, why is he so celebrated? Is it his enthusiasm?His height?

This is a real question.   All day long, I bombard my husband with questions even stupider, and he often responds by saying, “Why? Weren’t you at the meeting where we all learned this?”

So, whoever was at the meeting, please explain.

What an arresting image! I love it.

Can any of you smart ones offer an exegesis?

And she still has to pee!

I haven’t seen her in a while and I was getting worried.

Welcome back, Goony Bird!