What They (Damn It!) Have Learned About Us That We Never Wanted Them to Know

The Two spies who wrote this piece have done a terrible thing. Soon, they're going to publish "The Grown-Up Girl's Guide to Boys" and everyone (especially girls and other forms of women) will know our secrets: why we guys think the way we do, why we do the things we do. We want you to get a jump on the opposition, so, as a public service, we're giving you a preview of the things they'll find out.

Why we Hide Things

A boy believes that virtually everything he owns is either precious or incriminating, and that is why he figures that if he's going to go to the trouble of putting something away, he may as well go the extra half mile and hide it outright.

He puts the dirty underwear in the bottom drawer and the country-house lawn furniture in petty cash and, consequently, he can rarely find anything himself. Very early on, hiding ceases to serve any real purpose for a boy and becomes merely reflex; hence, he is likely to go through life putting down a legitimate business lunch with one client as a legitimate business dinner with another client and having no clear idea why. A boy himself can generally be found hiding behind sunglasses, a mustache and an unlikely story or, if he is rich and powerful enough, behind a receptionist, a couple of secretaries and a battery of high-priced lawyers.

The only stuff that a boy doesn't hide is the stuff that he means specifically to exhibit; that is, his car and his Kuwait Hilton matchbooks; and he also leaves out a few false leads in order to keep the curious and the nosy off the real trail. When a girl asks a boy, "Are you hiding something from me?" he will always look at her incredulously and answer, "Of course not. What could I possibly have to hide?"

Loud Noises and Us

Sometimes, when a boy is engaged in a perfectly normal discussion, say, of Soviet-American trade relations, he will suddenly and for no apparent reason insert an index finger into his mouth and dumfound his dinner companions with the sound of a champagne bottle popping its cork; or he will stick a hand into his armpit and pump it in such a way as to counterfeit the splutter of a whoopee cushion; or he will do a moment or two of Howard Cosell or a Turkish rug merchant or a siren or surf. With whatever blunt instrument---butter knife, pen, chopstick, swizzle stick, his own fingers or a cattle prod---happens to be at hand, he will investigate the acoustical properties of wineglasses, water tumblers, rattan lounge chairs, aluminum siding and his own and other people's heads. He will blow across the top of an empty beer bottle, turn up a radio, rev an engine, perhaps drive a sanitation truck through the sound barrier, crack ten knuckles and belch---and only then, as if nothing at all remarkable had happened, will he return to his major point: that grain is one thing but high technology is something else and probably we shouldn't sell it even to our good friends the Canadians.

In short, boys are acoustical primitives and, as such, they are able to move back and forth between words and random, inchoate sound in a way that girls find amusing, mystifying or mortifying.

What a girl doesn't understand is that the guitar serenading and the kettledrumming and most of the other aggressive ruckus a boy makes are, in fact, only sexual display, or strutting. A boy bleats and brays and rasps and toots Dixie on his car horn and makes obnoxious sucking noises in order to call attention to himself, and a girl ought to be flattered, even if she's not pleased. What ought to flatter a girl less is that occasionally, a boy will rise to a fever pitch of noisiness and not think about her at all: Finding himself alone in a living room with a lethargic fox terrier, he will get down on all fours and, failing to produce the magic high-frequency whistle that he had hoped would drive the dog crazy, he will roll around on the floor, bark, howl, yelp and yip and, in half a dozen other ways, try to establish rapport with the dog in the dog's own language.

Boys do not like, and do not respond to, subtle sounds. They are indifferent to wind chimes, jingle bells, onomatopoeia and any sound an English teacher would identify as tintinnabulation. Boys also have no use for silence, except insofar as it is useful in covert operations. Inspired by the Westerns they watched as kids, they will, for example, frequently slip into a pair of moccasins and try to get some fun going by sneaking up behind a summer house guest and simultaneously letting out a bloodcurdling war whoop and slamming her over the head with a day-old baguette.

Why we Think we can do it without any Practice

When a boy approaches a podium, a playing field, a battlefield or an audit, he will usually assure his well-wishers that he is pretty thoroughly prepared, that he has examined the situation from every angle and that he is ready to meet any contingency.

In fact, he usually will not have prepared at all, he will have looked the situation over from exactly one angle and he will not have even the vaguest idea what the contingencies are. A boy will, indeed, very nearly (concluded on page 158) What they have Learned (continued from page 114) convince himself that adequate preparation is practically indistinguishable from overpreparation in that they both lead to overconfidence and complacency and to a slowness to respond to surprises. He will further believe that adequate preparation and overpreparation are a lot more dangerous than underpreparation; and that is why, if he is given a choice, he will always take his chances with what he likes to think of as his fancy footwork, his razzmatazz, his body English and his smoke screens, his ability to talk his way out of just about anything and to tough his way out of whatever he can't talk his way out of.

A boy will also figure that, in a really tight situation, he can always count on the other guy to be even less well prepared than he is. Paradoxically, on the occasions when a boy has prepared religiously and has even worked his ad libs to a high polish, he will assure his well-wishers that he is going to go in cold and wing it; then, if he carries the day, he's not just a hero, he's a natural; whereas, if he blows it, he can say, "I wasn't really trying"---unlike girls, who are always saying, "I can't under-stand why I failed; I worked so hard."

What we think about when we're not thinking about anything

• Mil, novecientos noventa y nueve, novecientos noventa y ocho, novecientos noventa y siete, novecientos noventa y seis, novecientos noventa y cinco....

• This room, this house, this block, this street, this neighborhood, this city, this state, the whole country, the Western Hemisphere, the world, the solar system, the Milky Way, the universe....

• A-a-a-a-a-and starrrrrring....

• For sacred skies, for lah-lah waves....

• Mary, hi, how ya doin'? ... No.... Hello, Mary, this is.... No.... So, what's going on? ... Hello, Mary, you don't know me, but.... Hi, Mary, guess who! ... Hiya, doll, miss me? ... What do you mean, who is this?...

• Felice, Barbra, Lonnie, Janet Borg, Janet Bluestone, Judy, Judith, Ann, Angela, Annette, Cathy, Catherine Costello, Beatrice, Debbie Deane, Elinor, Jill in Atlanta, the two Karens, oh, and Cheryl...though not technically....

• Milwaukee Milk Walk Keel Meek Meal Lime Wake Week Mile Mail Male Kale Like Make Wail Maul Lake Lame Wile Weak....

• $42,857 x .1125 ÷ 12....

• Yaz in left field, Mays in center field, the Babe in right field; let's see, Koufax or Feller on the mound, Aparicio at shortstop, Gehrig at first, maybe Joe Morgan at second, Brooks Robinson at third, Berra behind the plate and the Goose in the bull pen, and the Japs can put up anyone they fucking well please....