When I was a boy, I began a long-running mental tally of the benefits and drawbacks of being male. The benefits were obvious: number one was urinary accuracy. Number two was the ability to run properly, without the helpless flapping of arms. Boys could also hang upside down without their dresses falling around their heads. Boys showed off, girls giggled. Boys played war, girls played house. Boys blew things up, girls did decoupage.

There were drawbacks too. Boys couldn't tell. Boys couldn't spell. And boys rode bikes designed to neuter them. I always wondered why boy's bikes had the bar and girl's bikes didn't, especially since the boys had so much more to lose, and the girls had literally nothing to lose. Today I believe it was all part of a vast 19th-century conspiracy to prevent girls from discovering masturbation, even at the expense of their brother's comfort and safety. The bar provided every boy with an ongoing, pre-emptive object lesson of some sort that got easier as we got taller. If we got taller.

My tally continued through high school. Girls had the advantage of impossibly beautiful bodies, theirs to do with whatever they desired. Boys had organically-grown shotguns they could shoot off at their pleasure. On the downside, girls had a monthly period that made them ghastly, and boys couldn't even ride a bus without getting a boner no books could hide. My first class was always gym, so you can imagine the trauma. What teenage boy has the wisdom to talk down a dick?

For the first time in my life I admitted I enjoyed playing with girls, and wanted to so badly that I was willing to forego all their many disadvantages: for example, they could get pregnant if you touched them. I saw a movie in high school of an "emergency childbirth" that was designed to terrorize me — and it did. They put the camera where the doctor's head should have been. We screamed when the bag of waters broke. We writhed as the baby crowned. Blood and guts were everywhere. The soundtrack squawked over the clatter of the 16mm film projector. As the victim screamed, the narrator stated calmly: More newspaper is needed. I thanked God I was a boy. I made a vow to be careful of that whole area. Imaginary sex was better, cheaper and more efficient anyway. Supply was plentiful.

Two weeks after my 18th birthday the U.S. government held a lottery in which the birthdays of all the boys of the land were placed in a hat, drawn at random and renumbered in ascending order. Boys with the lowest numbers were drafted first and sent to Vietnam to slaughter or be slaughtered. It was intended to be a fair system, and it was very fair; it was just unjust. I learned my fate from the Chicago Sun-Times. Numerically, at least, I was safer than many, but not most.