It’s in the Male : Warning: This Column Contains Blatant Sexual Stereotypes Not Meant to Be Taken Seriously

WHERE CAN I get a male ego? Anyone who believes that men and women have the same mind-set hasn’t lived on Earth. A man thinks that everything he does is wonderful, that the sun rises and sets around him. But a woman has doubts.

Recently, my husband and I were in an elevator, waiting to ascend from the depths of Parking Level Five to Ground Zero. After a few moments, I had a revelation. “Honey,” I said, “we’re not moving.”

“Sure we are,” Duke said with more certainty than I ever feel about anything.

We waited a little longer. The lights on the control panel were dark and there wasn’t the slightest sensation of motion. Yet he insisted that everything was under control because, he explained, “I pushed the button.”

I hate to argue with a man who has pushed the button (men frequently take it personally when a machine disobeys their commands). But I was getting claustrophobic. So I pushed the button and immediately--noticeably!--the elevator began to rise. Duke was unabashed. “There must be something wrong with that button,” he exclaimed.

I don’t know one woman (though I’m sure some exist) who would have come to that conclusion. I, for one, would have assumed that I made a mistake. That’s why I want a male ego. Men rarely seem to assume that they made a mistake.

“You’re looking at the basic premise of the male ego,” my friend Doug says. “Men are always right.” But this implies that when I disagree with one, I am always wrong. “You’ve got the picture,” he replies.

I detest the picture. But “it’s the thing that let our ancestors go out and kill woolly mammoths,” my friend Rob argues. “If you let any doubt creep in, you’re history. You’ve got to go out like it’s the only thing to do and you’re just the guy to do it. It’s the only way you’ve ever got a shot.”

I don’t want a shot. I just want to be treated fairly and paid well. Still, armed with a male ego, I could do battle over almost anything--the placement of my name on a memo, for example, or who gets served coffee first when I’m in a meeting. “Titles are really critical,” says my sister, Laurie, who believes that there should be a theme park based on the male ego, only “there’s not enough land.”

“There’s a guy in my office at the exact same level as me,” she says. “Yet he fought for six months--screaming!--to be called a Senior Media Supervisor instead of Senior Media Executive. Finally, our boss asked if I minded that Harold had this title--did I want it as well? I said, no, the title I wanted was Senior Media Goddess. So he put that on my door. Now Harold is fighting for a bigger office.”

My husband isn’t surprised. “A man’s ego is quite large,” Duke says. “But it’s very delicate.”

He’s telling me? In my experience, the male always seems to be discovering a cure for something, no matter what he’s doing. And whatever it is, it’s invariably more important than what the female wants to do. I’d be willing to bet that if one day a woman walked barefoot to the moon and back, and a man cleaned out his desk, when the two of them sat down to dinner that night, he would groan, “Boy, was that desk a mess.”

“It’s protective,” Rob says. “Would we ever do anything if we couldn’t convince ourselves and our loved ones that it was the most critical thing on the planet?”

I don’t know. Some guys seem to be without shame. Not too long ago, I was reading the Trump-versus-Trump coverage in the New York Daily News. Marla Maples was on the cover wearing something revealing (does she own a regular dress?). The headline read, “Best Sex I Ever Had.” None of my girlfriends (for the record, I don’t know Cher, Roseanne or Madonna) would be flattered to wake up and find that in giant letters on her doorstep. But . . .

“Reading that headline was the best sex Donald Trump ever had,” Duke said admiringly. “The male ego can always use an amorous press release.” (Actually, any stroke will do.)

I wonder if I could go to Sweden and have ego-change surgery or to Houston and get a male ego transplant. One useful side effect would be that I’d no longer feel the compulsion to straighten up the house. The next time I got lost, instead of asking for directions, I’d drive around in circles, clenching my teeth, trying to read the map while I was going 40 miles an hour. And if I happened to run into an abusive, frothing maniac, I could get into a nose-to-nose shrieking confrontation with him instead of discreetly slipping away.

On second thought, maybe the house isn’t big enough for two male egos.