BEAUTY SHOP TALK

by

Vicki Charmaine Bunch

Last week I told about how testosterone surges in the male occur every fifteen to twenty minutes, causing men to act bad. It's in a book called The Alchemy of Love and Lust by Dr. Theresa Crenshaw, which is actually a real book.

"Testosterone levels seem to be influenced by just about everything: the seasons, the environment, competition, the military, stress, a D cup, just to name a few," says Dr. Crenshaw. "Think about the moment-to-moment impact of testosterone levels firing and spiking all over the place during the day, and what this must be doing to a man's temperament . . . . No wonder they can be so, well, testy."

I took the book with me when I went to pay Sonny's bail. (He got a little careless with a bowl of chilli during the Cowboy playoff game.)

Sonny was relieved to find out guys just can't help losing control. One minute a fellow's writing poetry. The next minute he's hijacking a bus. He's in a hormone frenzy, his brain a swollen lump of flesh, his body driven by violent caveman instinct.

Sonny took the book to show some guys at the bottling plant.

Dick Benson, who's on probation for ramming his pick-up truck into Rusty's Barbecue, asked if he could borrow the book to show his probation officer.

"Even I was mystified as to why I did it," Dick said. "Running out of ribs isn't that big a deal to me normally."

Every guy at the plant had a different horror story of a Jekyl and Hyde transformation that wound them up in jail, church, or divorce court.

"If I'd have known it was just my body's natural cycle, I wouldn't have been so hard on myself," added Dick who, after the incident at Rusty's, went home and held his wife and mother-in-law at gunpoint for three days. Like a lot of other bad stuff, it happened during the playoffs.

One of the worst combinations known to nutritional science is the mixture of alcohol, testosterone, and pork rinds, according to Dr. Ed Phillips of the American Food Combination Council.

"The alcohol causes poor judgment. The testosterone, of course, gives rise to uncontrollable rage," Dr. Phillips said. "Then, right when the guy ought to either pass out or at least sit down and take it easy, the pork rinds cause a tremendous energy boost. That's why it's not unusual to hear about some fellow taking a sledge hammer to his next door neighbor's motor home after a big snack."

During past eons testosterone was harnessed by kings and pharaohs to build civilization's greatest monuments--the Great Pyramid of Geeza, the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and the outlet mall in Hillsboro. It takes military genius to control a horde of men with raging hormones--an Alexander the Great, an Atilla the Hun, a Barry Switzer.

But what great things they can accomplish.

"It's just like working with elephants," said Professor Elspeth Brunswig of Berlin University. "You get one elephant, it's just a big pain in the ass. You get three or four and you can put up a circus tent."

But you women out there already know that. For eons women have been harnessing testosterone for good not evil.

"Controlling the man is the main wifely duty. That, and giving big dinner parties," says an article from way back in 1943 by pioneer sexologist and etiquette pro Dame Beatrix Englewort.

Dame Beatrix exhorts readers to harness men for garbage removal, squirrel trapping, and learning to tango.

I've got Sonny lined up for all three this weekend.