I recently found myself seated around a small table in the East Village with four of my former classmates. Having relayed our orders to the waiter, we were contentedly consuming our Good Worlds the specialty drink of the house and watching a homeless person light fire to a trashcan across the street. Then without warning, one member of our group raised a topic that caused our Mexican friend to eject a portion of his Swedish meatball clear across the table.

In all fairness to our fashionable friend, his interest was piqued by a troubling article in Esquire, which indicated that his chance of ever again receiving a handjob was about as likely as finding Dean sober on a Saturday night. It seems that women these days are just not as dexterous as they were in days of ages past. We debated amongst ourselves whether handjobs are in fact a fleeting fad like Zinser's pleated khakis or, rather, a cyclical trend whose popularity fluctuates with the times like the color of Langer's hair. Our cultivated visitor from across the Atlantic summed up our collective opinion with two words - Competitive Advantage.

It comes down to this why should one do for another what that person can do better for themselves? After all, as Elaine from Seinfeld explains so eloquently, "Being a woman, I only really have access to the equipment, what, 45 minutes a week, and that's on a good week. How can I be expected to have the same expertise as people who own this equipment and have access to it 24 hours a day their entire lives?" Still, could this nut be so simple to crack? Perhaps the question provides the answer. It seems that women refrain from getting their hands dirty for one of two reasons. Either they suffer from feelings of inferiority at their ability to get the job done or they are interpreting those ever so subtle signals that men tend to emit in the heat of the moment.

Do men feel that manual gratification is equivalent to punting on fourth and 1 on the 10-yardline? One woman we interviewed summed it up this way: "I mean, if a guy gets a handjob on a first date, I think he should be psyched. But, if youve been dating a guy for a while, I think he'd prefer you to do other things." Before you girls throw up your hands in distress, though, you should know that while most of the men we interviewed were not willing to sacrifice other pleasures for manual simulation, they were in favor of keeping it in the lineup. After all, as one respondent emphasized again and again, "Its always better for a chick to have more tools in her toolbox." We tend to agree even if your quarterback is a stellar passer, he still needs to hand off every once in a while. Furthermore, even if certain skills are not used during game time they may come in handy during warm-ups.