Bright Lights, Tight Skirt : STORY OF MY LIFE<i> by Jay McInerney (Atlantic Monthly Press: $16.95; 188 pp.) </i>

Are men running out of things to say? Or are they finally getting in touch with the side of the brain where sensitivity and mascara are housed? The answers to both questions may be yes, judging from the fact that some of our best male writers have recently paraded down the publishing runway in crinolines. First came John Updike as “S.,” then Reynolds Price as “Kate Vaiden,” then Jim Harrison as “Dalva.” Now comes an equally effective though younger male voice from the distaff side of town, Jay McInerney, as Alison Poole in “Story of My Life.” All four of these novels are about so-called women’s issues. (In fact, “Dalva” and “Kate Vaiden” are about a woman’s search for a lost son.) If they had been written by women, they would be both excoriated and praised as “women’s novels,” in either case, a one-way ticket to the literary shtetl .

As in the author’s first novel, “Bright Lights, Big City,” McInerney again takes us to the urban theme park of Manhattan night life, where the young and aimless spend their time waiting for thrills--tilt-a-whirl sex, roller-coaster drugs and the love boat, the ship that never quite gets in because it’s not on anybody’s guest list. But at this carnival of ennui, men are attractive accessories. Alison and her gung-ho platoon of wired female buddies are the MIAs from McInerney’s first literary tour of duty.

And, like many female characters in contemporary novels, they seem to be taking cover in some sort of psychic bunker. As Alison recounts during the cocaine-dusted time warp prior to her 21st birthday, “Acting is the first thing that’s made me get up in the morning. The first year I was in New York I didn’t do anything but guys and blow. Staying out all night at the Surf Club and Zulu, waking up at 5 in the afternoon with plugged sinuses and sticky hair. . . . Story of my life.”

It is to the author’s credit that this and other much coarser observations are not really coarse but oddly charming. This is because Alison is sort of a whacked-out Eloise, the fictional little girl who lived at the Plaza, thoroughly spoiled and ill-mannered; here, loathsome of hypocrisy and sexually precocious.

In fact, R-rated sexual escapades are a big part of Alison’s story. She is forced to re-live many of these escapades at a party for the Kentucky Derby that features not only hepped-up thoroughbreds but many of her unruly, well-bred bedmates. One of them is serious contender Dean, an investment banker who wants to earn a couple of million dollars before becoming a playwright. When they spend their first night together, they can’t make love because Alison, who doesn’t believe in prophylactics, has caught a sexually transmittable disease from Skip, who introduced her to Dean. But the other things that they do Alison recounts like a true woman--in detail and with relish. Sometimes it takes a man to tell a woman what kind of orgasm she is having.

The most interesting scenes in the book are those in which characters play an insidious parlor game that girls like to initiate called “Truth or Dare.” It is obviously designed for those who don’t yet own a Fil-o-fax. Alison’s debauched friend Didi, the perpetual mistress of ceremonies, explains it to sex-dizzy Dean (who figures he’s going to dare one of the girls to strip): “Everybody has to swear at the beginning to tell the truth, because otherwise there’s no point. When it’s your turn, you say either truth or dare. If you say truth, you have to answer whatever question you’re asked. And if you say dare, then you have to do whatever somebody dares you to do.” This is the kind of diversion that can spark or snuff out a love affair, as Alison learns, when at a crucial moment, the ever-candid urchin of the avenue tells the truth. Consequences: Dean vanishes from her life. McInerney could have gotten more juice from these scenes if he had made the point that by telling the truth, Alison was actually taking the dare. Still, the game serves as the missing center of the book.

In the end, however, Alison’s adventurous monologue becomes dissatisfying, not unlike the sex she experiences. McInerney’s late-inning recap of a father-daughter horror story is too perfunctory to explain how a girl as smart, witty and prematurely wise as Alison could fail to see herself within any sort of cultural context, how she could maintain connections with absolutely no one, not even her beloved grandmother, whose pearls she finally sells to a greedy front for her jealous sister.

Yet, McInerney’s authentic rendering of girl talk, his sympathetic portrayal of female characters who suffer from benign neglect, and his continuing scrutiny of the young ponies of the equestrian class--(Alison used to sleep in the stable with her favorite mount, Dangerous Dan)--make “Story of My Life” highly readable. If this isn’t a “women’s novel,” I don’t know what is. But does it take a guy writing in Maud Frizon pumps to finally get rid of this unfortunate distinction? Maybe, but that’s OK. It wasn’t until Pat Boone sang “Tutti Frutti” that white people “discovered” the black man who wrote this so-called piece of jungle music, Little Richard. Then, they called it rock ‘n’ roll!