SANDY DAYS, SALTY NIGHTS
Distilling the male mind
ArtisHENDERSON sandydays@florida-weekly.com

My hat's off to the Russians, that nation of imaginative, inventive people that first turned dingy potatoes into crystalline vodka. I may not have borscht running through my veins, but there's enough hillbilly in my ancestry that I can relate to this still-mentality.

In the relationship realm, I've been doing some distilling of my own, trying to reduce the complex male psyche down to a single, pan-female requirement. I surveyed guy friends and poured through Internet dating profiles, observed men in their natural habitats and on the prowl. The result was surprising (and much simpler than I ever thought possible).

The process began with a frightening bit of information. Lunching with my girlfriends and our token guy tagalong, we agonized over another bachelor friend's recent choice in girlfriends. She's pretty, yes - no debate there - but what she has in looks she lacks in brains.

"How could he make such a disastrous choice?" we said. What we meant was: How could he pick her over us?

Under his breath, between mouthfuls of meatball sandwich, our male lunch friend added his two cents. "Gotta love a slow girl."

She's pretty, yes - no debate there - but what she has in looks she lacks in brains. "How could he make such a disastrous choice?" we said. What we meant was: How could he pick her over us?

We froze in our back-and-forth quibbling. "Excuse me?" I said. "What was that?"

Coached through adolescence and early womanhood by magazines like Cosmo and Glamour, I was assured each month that men like intelligent, independent women. And, here's this guy telling me they like 'em slow?

"And soft," he said. "With a touch of trailer park."

Could this be right? Was this the secret of male minds everywhere, that good looks and a low IQ equals the perfect mate?

Sitting at the restaurant table, widemouthed in disbelief, I recalled an earlier story. A friend stopped by to visit his mother, who was chatting with the new (young and pretty) neighbor. He hung around, obviously interested, until she threw out these fateful words: "What I really want in life is to be a librarian."

Like that, the magic of the moment faded, and he could not beat a fast enough

retreat.

Worried that this was true, that I would have to reduce the entire body

of male preferences to a pretty face and a slow mind, I turned to the everreliable Internet.

Specifically, my cache of dating

sites.

On match.com, guys can list their likes and dislikes, giving a yea or nay

to a range of pre-selected options. I was relieved to see that 'brainiacs' got as many thumbs-ups as thumbs-downs, and I was content to throw out the matterover mind scenario.

With this first theory out the window, I combed through the profiles more carefully, looking for the single, definitive equation that would sum up the male brain. No easy task. Boldness was listed as a turn-on for some, a turn-off for others. Body piercings? Split fifty-fifty. Sarcasm? Public displays of affection? Candlelight? No consensus.

As I poured over the profiles, a pattern started to emerge. At first, I denied its simplicity. But, the same characteristic popped up over and over again, on every profile, for every type of man: Long hair.

I wondered if this was it, the culmination of thousands of years of biological programming, the pinnacle and definition of male desire. I thought back to all the times friends and boyfriends had waxed poetic on women with flowing tresses: Gisele Bundchen, Cindy Crawford, Lady Godiva, Rapunzel. The evidence was undeniable and the male mind, distilled, as clear as moonshine.

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