Where Jackson keeps his five

It’s time to play with one of Michael Jackson’s favorite things. No, no, silly – not the Vienna Boys Choir; I’m talking about the crotch.

Unlike the rump, a subject that has enjoyed an upsurge in popular music, songs about the male crotch barely gets any airplay. Aside from Chuck Berry’s memorable seventies hit My Ding-A-Ling, the last time our unsung hero bulged into the local music scene was in Parokya ni Edgar’s morality tale Don’t Touch My Birdie. However, it is hardly coincidental that both songs share the same moral lesson: Do not incur the wrath of the ding-a-ling.

When it comes to body language, it is the male crotch that does most of the talking (and, if the brief fits, most of the bragging as well). For most men, the male crotch also does most of the thinking. And men often want women to think that they are big thinkers. However, the question is: Do women really care if men are big thinkers?

Unlike women, whose bodies forcibly evolved into sexual signaling devices lest men get too friendly with swelling red-butted monkeys, men’s bodies are forcibly evolving into couch potatoes. After all, men’s bodies were originally built to hunt for food. But ever since the invention of fast food, men’s innate hunting skills have become as useful to them as was betting on Erik Morales last Sunday.

Since the 21st century, women have had to look for other attractive features in men aside from their rock-hard beer bellies. And because God didn’t want to make women too perfect, he made sure that the only other feature that women could find attractive in a man was his ability to fulfill their emotional needs (at this point, most women wish that God gave them the ability to reproduce asexually instead). This is actually one of the key differences between Martians and Venusians when it comes to attraction: men merely need to ogle a woman’s curves to find her attractive, but women need to look beyond a man’s sexy beer belly to find an "emotion" that she can attach to him that will make him attractive.

So when a man spies a woman with an extremely loud sexual signal, he will probably say, "Wow, that woman has a big set of (insert appropriate noun here)." However, when a woman sees a couch potato with a noticeable appendage, you will never hear her say, "Wow, that man has a big crotch." Nor will she find the emotion behind the body part and say, "Wow, that man has a big, sensitive, caring crotch."

In short, women don’t really care much about how big the crotch looks. But if that is the case, then why are men so concerned that their crotches look large enough to hide Gringo Honasan? Who are the men trying to impress with that wocket in their pocket?

Apparently, men are out there trying to make a good impression on… other men.

According to the Guide to Getting It On, males have a powerful curiosity to check out the sperm guns on other males. A group of Ph.D. students studying male behavior hung out in a restroom during a major league baseball game to surreptitiously observe a hundred different men who were relieving themselves. These Ph.D. students claim that most men made attempts to discreetly check out the "chief of staff" of whoever was peeing next to them. Furthermore, men who were "well endowed" went out of their way to display their offensive weapons to the other men who were peeing next to them. An insightful study such as this leads me to ask: How do you study other men taking a leak for several hours without having your heads used as toilet plungers? That doctorate better be worth it.

But again, I digress. Well-endowed men who expose themselves make me lose my focus (and not to mention my aim). So, if you are a guy who has inadvertently glanced down at another man’s wee-wee while at the restroom, you don’t need to make any life-changing decisions as of yet. This is a perfectly normal thing for men to do. If you are a male baboon, that is.

In troops of baboons, males display their dominance over other males by using a penis display. Instead of risking injury by fighting, the baboons spread their legs to give each other a free show of each other’s baboon maker. The baboon with the largest population weapon is seen as the most dominant. After thoroughly exposing himself to the rest of the tribe, Mr. "I Am God’s Gift to Baboons" will reach down and jiggle his warhead from time to time to constantly reassert his dominance. Male humans often employ the same tactics without really being aware of it. I believe there is some truth to this: Even if my ding-a-ling is tucked away in a pair of bikini briefs and snug-fitting low-rise pants, I can’t even begin to count the number of times I’ve scared away most baboons, orangutans, gorillas and God-fearing individuals.

The exposure of your twenty-first digit is an inherently male form of communication that warns, "My crotch is a deadly weapon." In fact, The Definitive Guide to Body Language says that one of the most common forms of this display is the "Cowboy Stance," or the thumbs-in-belt gesture. With legs apart, the pseudo-exhibitionist plants both his feet firmly on the ground, his arms flayed out in a readiness position while his thumbs are tucked into the belt or into the tops of the pockets to draw your attention to the rodeo that is in his pants. Men use this gesture to stake their territory or to show other men that they are unafraid. It is either that or they are about to pass gas.

However, the purpose of this gesture isn’t used only to frighten off less biologically gifted men. It is also a stance that is used by men to display a sexually attractive attitude that tells women, "I am virile – I can dominate – I don’t need Viagra." It is a common gesture that has been used by such acting greats as the late Fernando Poe, Jr., the former President Joseph Estrada and Dolphy in his pre Zsa-Zsa days. Any man who adopts this posture is easily read by most women since it gives away what his crotch is thinking. And a woman having her period who reads this gesture correctly will reply by kneeing the man in the groin, if she is feeling sorry for him.

The second most common male crotch display that has led women to throw up spontaneously is when men adjust their crotches in public. Women everywhere complain that they will be chatting with a man when, for no apparent reason, he will begin to adjust or handle his crotch (stop making me palo, yaya!) "Why do they keep touching themselves down there?" women must wonder. "Are they checking to see if it has been abducted by aliens, escaped an abusive master, or if it has retreated into his intestines?" Is it because men want women to think that their projectiles are so large and cumbersome that they need constant re-positioning to prevent the cut-off of blood circulation? Well? What justification do you regularly endowed men use?

For my three female readers out there, let us put it this way: Our stick shift usually needs to be in neutral. Or, as The Guide to Getting It On puts it, when the skin on your genitals sticks to the thighs, or the skin of your stick shift sticks to your family jewels, or if there is any involuntary sticking going on in the nether regions, a man will naturally get a claustrophobic feeling. It is like you have had your arms pressed up against your sides all the time. You have to move something down there or else the blood flow might just stop and it will wrinkle up like a raisin and fall off. Contrary to what you may think, there is no itching involved in this procedure. So baby powder will not help.

But human relationship specialists Allan and Barbara Pease claim that there is another reason aside from falling raisins that men keep adjusting their crotches. When a group of men get together during macho events such as sporting events or visits to their favorite KTV, they ritually give themselves a crotch adjustment as each male unconsciously asserts his masculinity in front of other males. This was the case last Sunday during the Pacquiao-Morales fight. For those who were observant enough, you would have noticed how many Pinoys in the Thomas and Mack auditorium in Las Vegas were continuously adjusting their groins with pride while the Mexicans were scurrying out of the venue holding on to their crotches hoping that nothing would fly away.

Proudly cupping my groin as I wrote this column, something occurred to me: In the primate world, the monkeys assume that the larger one’s bald banana, the more capable that monkey is of handing a Pacquiao-worthy a$$-whipping to another monkey. So they fear the monkey with the mightiest meat even if he isn’t the largest monkey in the tribe. In the human world, men might make the same correlation about the size of our bald bananas and the ability to kick a$$ monkey-style as well. If that is so, then you can forget about working out three times a week, you can forget about learning self-defense, and you can even forget needing your yaya to accompany you wherever you go. Because all you need is a crotch that would make King Kong scamper away in fear. Or at least give the impression that you have one.

If you still have those fashion abominations known as knee-length white socks, you can make them useful by stuffing a couple of pairs into your underwear. However, crotch stuffing is not that easy: it is a skill that takes years or practice to achieve the right consistency without making it look like you are growing a colony of bees in your crotch. For more sock-stuffing advice, you can e-mail me separately and send some cash. I particularly urge those whose crotches cannot even scare away small rodents to send nothing smaller than thousand peso bills.

For those recalcitrant few who refuse to send me money, you might be thinking, "I don’t have to fake it with the size of my crotch, I can always fake it with the size of my shoes." Sigh. You cannot rely on that old wives’ tale about the relationship between foot size and penis length. In fact, two Canadian scientists who had nothing better to do with their time have conducted extensive research entitled "The Relationship Among Height, Penile Length and Foot Size" which was published in the Annals of Sex Research. Really.

The researchers recruited 63 men who were willing to have their relevant body parts measured. To ensure the credibility of the study, the penises had to be stretched when they were measured. The researchers didn’t specify what method was used to stretch the penises. After seeing one too many stretched penises, the researchers came to this conclusion: "Our data… indicate that there is no practical utility in predicting penis size from foot size or height."

Too bad for you, Ronald McDonald.

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For comments, suggestions or you would like to prove the researchers wrong, please email ledesma.rj@gmail.com or visit www.rjledesma.com.