COLUMN: My brilliant career

From Joe Green's "Sauce on the Side," Fall '96 From Joe Green's "Sauce on the Side," Fall '96Wondering how guys canFrom Joe Green's "Sauce on the Side," Fall '96Wondering how guys cansense girls' 'happilyFrom Joe Green's "Sauce on the Side," Fall '96Wondering how guys cansense girls' 'happilyattached' status? This newFrom Joe Green's "Sauce on the Side," Fall '96Wondering how guys cansense girls' 'happilyattached' status? This newtheory explains it all. From Joe Green's "Sauce on the Side," Fall '96Wondering how guys cansense girls' 'happilyattached' status? This newtheory explains it all. I had a back-up plan. If the admission directors at the graduate English programs to which I'd applied were not swayed by my offers to wash their cars, renovate their basements and teach their kids Pig Latin, well, then I could just get a Ph.D. in any one of several complicated sciences. In fact, the level of my ignorance is so staggering that in my Geology 101 class, nicknamed "Rocks for Jocks" by those more scientifically self-assured members of the Penn student body, my TA scrawled something that looked like "You've got to be joking!" on my midterm in place of a letter grade or score. Despite these setbacks, until very recently I was convinced that I had an edge over the ordinary applicant to a science graduate program. Oh, sure, they may not have been banned from taking the Graduate Record Examination Chemistry subject test, and the zeros in their GPAs probably came after the decimal point. But how many of them, by the age of 22, developed a sophisticated parapsychological theory as significant to the natural universe as ESP or the Tooth Fairy Phenomenon? I, on the other hand, discovered Male Possession Intuition theory. If you are so ignorant as to have not heard of this truly ground-breaking hypothesis, known colloquially as "boyfriend vibes," the best way to describe it is to say it challenges the assumption that men are clueless oafs. Oh, sure, some of them may not always understand the words "Get your grubby hands off me," and others may attempt to meet compatible members of the opposite sex by yelling "Nice boobies" out of moving vehicles at attractive pedestrians. But my theory stipulates that despite this seemingly dense behavior, men are actually quite perceptive in their interaction with the opposite sex when it comes to one thing: determining whether a woman is off-limits. Some may mistakenly dismiss this acute sixth sense as "Gay-dar," or "noticing an engagement ring." But in a survey of three of my closest female heterosexual friends who have boyfriends, it was discovered that men, nine times out of 10, will instinctively avoid flirtation with a woman involved in an exclusive relationship. In a riveting example, a friend from my high school reported that even when she goes into nightclubs alone, wearing nothing but a tank top and a mini-skirt, men know better than to make a pass at her. (Of course, this may be because the tank top is embroidered with the words, "My Boyfriend is a Serial Killer." ) But take the case of the daughter of my next-door neighbor, who would never wear a shirt with a cute little saying like that, because she thinks shirts are tacky. She said that before she had a boyfriend, men would gape at her when she walked down the street. Now, she's lucky if a waiter will meet her eye when she's ordering lunch. And I don't think the fact that she's stopped waxing the hair on her upper lip has anything to do with it. No, it was intuition, a sixth sense, a special male blend of ESP created by that powerful male hormone, estrogen. Or progesterone, or whatever it's called. Brilliant theory, huh? I was already imagining how I would pose for the cover photo of Scientific American -- how cleverly I would respond during interviews with that Wall Street Journal of parapsychology, the National Enquirer. "Professor Green," a reporter would ask, "we have heard rumors that the ghost of Elvis Presley hit on the Loch Ness Monster. Would such an occurrence refute the plausibility of your Male Possession Intuition Theory?" "Well," I would reply with oh-so-much media savvy, "I am sure that rumor is false. After all, why would Elvis hit on Nessie when he could obviously sense that Nostradamus is her man? Please. I think we both know that The King has a lot more MPI than that." It wasn't until I decided to test this theory myself during Spring Break that my dreams of acclaim in the science world faded away more quickly than my tan. DAYTONA BEACH, Fla. -- I lay on a chaise lounge by a murky motel swimming pool, scribbling away at my first draft of Why Men Don't Ask Women With Boyfriends On Dates. On my right were two female spring breakers, who claimed their parents had actually named them "Trixie" and "Kiki." Suddenly, a sunburnt community college drop-out in Speedos walked up to them and grinned. "Hey babes, want me to rub suntan lotion on your body? I've got the best hands in Daytona Beach." "Grody," said Trixie. Kiki, the kinder of the two, added, "Well, I'd let you, if it weren't for the fact that you are repulsive." So Speedos-man actually decided to resort to trying his luck with me. "Hey babe, want me to rub suntan lotion on your body? I've got the best hands in Daytona Beach." I shook my head in amazement. "Well, duh!" Shaking his head, Speedos-man wandered away to the other side of the pool. I turned to Trixie and Kiki. "I hope you don't mind my asking, but I'm doing a scientific study and would like to know if either of you have boyfriends." "We both do." "And have other men flirted with you, even though you aren't available?" I continued. "Well, duh! Our names are Trixie and Kiki and we like to wear bikinis. Any other questions?" It was then that I decided that offering English graduate program directors basement renovations and Pig Latin lessons would not be sufficient. No, I would have to give them something more hard to come by -- nine little words that English graduate program directors love to hear: "Hey, I think my uncle can get you tenure."