Once a week, with feeling

Men don’t talk to each other.

Well, OK, they talk royal flush vs. full house, Shaq vs. Kobe, Red Sox vs. Yankees. But they don’t sit around, as do women, and reveal, share intimacies and frailties. Right?

“That’s a myth,” counters writer-director Andrew Bergman, who’s been meeting weekly in New York City with five men for more than two decades.

Retired Los Angeles businessman Bill Newman, who surprised himself by responding so openly to the group he attends every Wednesday in Beverly Hills, agrees: “We discuss confidential problems of a psychological nature.”

The truth is, there are plenty of men of all ages who meet regularly and get right down to the most human of stuff.

“It would be best if they could do it one on one with each other in a more natural way,” says Los Angeles psychiatrist Dr. Roger Gould. “But these groups are the next best thing, great training experiences. Work and sports aren’t the right realms for real talk or for exploring the vagaries of life.”

And if you think these men’s groups take it lightly, think again.

“I came back from Iowa on a 6:15 a.m. flight just to make it to our lunch,” says CNN commentator Jeff Greenfield, who’s part of the Bergman group.

“Last Wednesday I gave up a potential new client meeting because it interfered with the group,” says another member, advertising executive Jerry Della Femina. “Heck, it was only a $5-million account.”

Della Femina was the last member admitted into that group (“I sort of auditioned”) 23 years ago. And while today he calls it “a lifeline for us all,” he admits he was a rather reluctant joiner.

“When I met my now-wife, Judy,” he recalls, “she complained that I had no male friends. To which I explained I don’t like men friends, I prefer the company of women. It was not her idea of a good way to start a relationship, so she kicked and screamed and got Joel [film critic Siegel] to invite me.”

Not that he’s completely turned around: “It turns out I only like these guys.”

His wife felt that Della Femina needed male friends to confide in and that it would ease her burden. “Men are still overly dependent on their wives to create a social life,” Gould says, “and too dependent on them to be their emotional connections.”

My father, who died last year, was not the most, shall we say, intimate of men: There was a quip for everything, and he deflected personal conversation by asking most of the questions. And yet he was part of a Los Angeles group that called itself the Tuesday Knights (they met the first Tuesday of the month) for more than 25 years. Comprising about 10 men and founded by advertising executives team Jack Roberts and Ralph Carson, the group was formed to discuss national issues. But eventually they discarded the political for the personal.

“It started lagging in the early ‘80s,” recalls Lillian Carson, widow of Ralph, “and then Ralph got sick” (with the lung disease that took his life a few years later). “His wish was for the group to get back together on a regular basis, and that’s when they began to talk more personally and the bonds grew.”

Different sparks

Men’s groups often tend to start up around a specific topic, as the Tuesday Knights did with politics and as did another group that has been meeting at the Brentwood Country Club monthly for more than 30 years. (“Only once did it get personal: when my wife left me and we all talked about our marriages,” recalls member Wesley Bilson.)

In the case of the Coffeehouse group in New York, journalists and show people get together simply to schmooze: “a place to meet without offices,” says NBC producer Paul Greenberg, a member along with New Yorker writer Roger Angell.

When actor-singer Mandy Patinkin found himself talking one night at a party with three men who had young boys in the same Manhattan school, he suggested they meet regularly to discuss raising sons.

“It was an amazing release, to learn how others were dealing with similar issues,” says member Warren Sherman.

The longer such groups continue, of course, the more chance that a crisis will arise among the members: So it was with the fathers’ group when one of the dads contracted terminal cancer.

“It was wrenching and felt like a death in the family of all our families,” Hoyle says. “Mark used to say the father’s group was really about family. When we got together about a month before he died, Mark was still talking matter-of-factly about death, cancer and fatherhood. He was not naturally a guy to talk about himself, but the group allowed him to tell us that it was important our sons not see him giving in to this devastating disease.”

The New York lunch group began with the death of Siegel’s wife. The men were watching the Super Bowl at his home shortly after and found they enjoyed each other’s company so much they decided to try getting together weekly. “We’ve all lost parents, there have been, aside from me, multiple marriages, Joel got sick, I had surgery,” Bergman says. “But we get through it partly because we know that next Wednesday at 12:30 we’re going to see our pals.”

That group meets in a restaurant. The Tuesday Knights started at the now-defunct Tail O’ the Cock on La Cienega Boulevard but later rotated among their homes. Newman’s men’s group, which started about 13 years ago, meets one morning a week at the Beverly Hills Tennis Club. And lest you think these groups appeal mostly to the touchy-feely, post-feminism types, the latter began when most members were in their 70s.

“I’ve learned how to expose myself in a sense,” says Newman, 86, who adds, “we’ve all talked about our kids, our wives, everything. One nice thing about doing it in our later years is we’ve all pretty much made it in our professional lives, so we have the time to sit for an hour and a half and reflect.”

Different issues necessarily arise for different ages. One Reseda-based group consists of men in their 50s. Robert, one member, says: “We haven’t gotten into the big health issues yet. But it’s only been a year and it has already turned into an interesting support group and one that gives us different perspectives. There must be 200 women’s groups like ours, but for a lot of us, it’s a new thing to be able to talk openly with other guys about both personal and professional things. It feels like a secret clubhouse.”

Robert talks about the group’s “chemistry,” the right mix being crucial in a group that meets often. Douglas Brayfield, who’s been part of another group in Los Angeles, says there is always some tension between “those who wanted to go deeper and those who wanted to skip around the lake, so to speak. I still think men find talking intimately more challenging, and it’s still a society where they are expected to maintain a sense of control.”

He points to one subject his group -- and seemingly most such groups -- steer clear of: “You know what we don’t talk about? Sex. That’s where the difference between men and women lies.”

Still, give credit where it’s due: All these men talk less about what they do than who they are. Della Femina points out that his group has about “20 books between us, but we don’t talk about that. Jeff [Greenfield] came back from New Hampshire and we didn’t talk about politics, I don’t talk about my last ad. We celebrate each other in different ways.”