Classified Information in Battle of Sexes : HOW BOYS SEE GIRLS, <i> by David Gilmour,</i> Random House, $19, 161 pages

While women often bemoan the fact that they are stereotyped by men (into those Madonna/whore/buddy categories), it is equally true that females engage in some of the same rough classifications.

You never hear a mother nagging her daughter to: “Go out and find a nice barfly, for heaven’s sake! Find someone who will cheat on you and hand you some laughs and some good times!”

Still, many women love boozy, selfish charmers for the laughs, the afternoons spent in sunny parks or smoke-filled bars, and--let’s come out and say it--they appreciate low-achieving lounge lizards for the romance they offer, the hokum, the suffering, the silly jokes, the sex.

You have to go pretty far back in time to find a novel in which a male narrator unabashedly gives so much time and attention to the little matter of love. Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” is the respectable example.

Two more raffish ones include Wirt Williams’ “Love in a Windy Space” and Gene D’Olive’s “Chiara” (in which the hero, during his “ten days of love at Positano,” spends so much time in the sexual act that his knees become permanently skinned). And let’s not forget about Henry Miller.

Today, though, it seems that most writers--and readers--are presuming that heroes be out fighting wars or putting money in their bank accounts.

“I was drinking a lot in those days,” Bix, the narrator of David Gilmour’s “How Boys See Girls,” tells us in his opening sentence. “I don’t apologize for it . . . when the booze clicked in, things looked ripe as yellow flowers and the moments soared like one of those free-floating birds I saw from the hotel window when I was a kid.”

If you don’t like that opening sentence, you can put the book down right there and pick up something like “Successfully Gouging the Poor in the Upcoming ‘90s.” If you love this sentence, read on to find out about Bix, who is living his 40th year through a lovely summer in Toronto.

Bix writes speeches for high achievers, stuffing platitudes into their prim, unimaginative mouths. He has a nice ex-wife there with him, and a very sweet daughter. But Bix is at loose ends--and at his ease--in this beautiful city, where spring leaves bud out on winter’s trees, and street vendors come out on corners to display their tacky, appealing wares.

One of these vendors is 19-year-old Holly, a school dropout, a lonely girl, a girl who, though pretty, has no conversation. Bix, turning 40 this summer, is transfixed with lust. He’s crazy about her. And he does some crazy things while he contrives to meet her, make love to her. Everything about Holly drives Bix loony with desire.

As Tina Turner might question: “What’s love got to do with it?” It’s the damp hair under Holly’s arms, the turn of her grubby ankles, that makes Bix her love slave--that, and the fact that she’s got a yen for somebody else. Bummer!

The summer unfolds, and so does their romance. Bix tells us about it. He believes in lust, drunkenness, the body, nights waking up with this girl when she has a light fever. When she tells him she’s not very attracted to him physically, Bix suffers a sort of physical agony.

But none of that keeps him from long afternoons chatting with his ex-wife, or drifting out--with self-regarding melancholy--to a local strip joint, or looking after his child when it’s his turn, or walking the beautiful, lively streets of Toronto, happy, in his romantic suffering, his sexual malaise, just to be alive.

Yes, there are all kinds of guys. Bix will never fight in Desert Storm. He will never run for political office. He may not even pay his child support. But without him and his morally unregenerate brethren, women everywhere would yawn themselves to death, and their sweet young bodies would dry up from being inadequately loved.

Next: John Wilkes reviews “How the Sham Stole the Moon” by William H. Calvin (Bantam).