A friend of mine likes to talk about all the women he's slept with, about all teh hearts he's broken and about how he really doesn't care about those things very much at all.
He's a poster bo for men behaving badly and that's the way he likes it - no smiling in photos, no commitments, no confessions. He's a brick wall o fmasculine energy.
But like so many men, he's really a big sissy.
Fashion is a priority, bottles of cologne fill the bathroom, and it takes him 30 minutes to "sculpt" his hair on a quick day.
For a guy who cares about so little, he seems to put a lot of stock in what people, especially women, think of him.
Sadly, he is a model to live by for most of his species. We men like to play up our independance and love for sports and hanging with the guys, but deep down we're more emotional, conscientious and insecure than we care to admit.
Don't agree? Then witness the rise of the men's magazine. Not so much Playboy or Penthouse, but new kids on the block such as Details, Maxim and Gear. Hidden behind those photos of beautiful, buxom women are articles containing tips on everything from "how to make her scream your name in bed" to "picking the perfect suit for that big interiew."
The mags reinforce men's perception that they're young, hip and handsome, while at the same time calming their fears that they'r enot attractive, not masters of teh bedroom and not chiefs of the "war-drobe."
The magazines present a pradox because they know that's how men are.
Many men - my friends for starters - would dispute all of this, of course. They'd say that a lot of guys are secure in themselves and that they certainly have no need for petty reassurances at the newsstand. I won't try to pin down the demons of a 40-year-old married father, but in the realm of 20 somethings, it's a sure bet that insecurity reigns supreme.
To make matters worse, many men don't understand what they feel, or why they do the things they do. Ask any former sports heroes pumping iron in your local gym why they do that every day, and most won't be able to give an answer any more solid than "To get huge?"
In the end, they may be there to impress women or fulfill some diluted image of what a man needs to look like, but articulating that fact, probably because it's so baffling, usually proves difficult.
The mass media spew images which affect men just as profoundly as women. Guys' collective fears and obsessions also come as much from external sources as they do form within.
American males are torn between a society that values symbols of harsh masculinity, such as the Rat Pack, but also pushes them to constantly redefine their role in a post-deminism world.
Fortunately for men, they aren't the only ones who can't figure out what constitutes "a real man." Even the most die-hard feminists shudder at the thought of a bunch of spineless, ultra sensitive she-men walking around.
All of this puts men, especially us young guys, in a bit of a quandry. We'd no doubt help ourselves alot by just being ourselves, and responding to concerns from the fairer sex as they come up.
But I'm not going to pretend that doing so is easy.
For all the women out there at a loss for words about our many deficiencies, I urge a bit of understanding. Sure, we're guilty of creating a lot of our own problems, often comically so. But we also have teh hardy task of living among confusion, where masculinity is a valued commodity, but often measured only in doses.