Published by Thomas Allen Publishers
ISBN 0887621902
(978-0887621901)

Purchase within Canada:
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Purchase within USA:
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 What I Meant To Say: The Private Lives of Men

Ian Brown, general editor
David Macfarlane, contributor

In What I Meant to Say, writer and broadcaster Ian Brown has gathered 25 beautifully crafted and thoroughly readable essays by some of Canada's most interesting male voices - pieces of writing that explore, reveal and explain the terrain of manhood, both new and old.

From "Boner and Nothingness" by David Macfarlane:

It is a misconception, common to women and men alike, that an erection necessarily has something to do with sex. It is easy to see how such a fallacy takes hold. One need only spend a short time in a barnyard before the connection is made. But I'm not so sure. Frankly, I'm inclined - so to speak - to a more holistic explanation.

My misgivings first arose.... (Look. The subject is so rife with cheap double-entendres, I think we should ignore them whenever they pop up, don't you?) As I was saying. My doubts on this matter arose in math class in grade six.

Depending on how a man measures these things (you see what I mean?), you might put the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue or the Victoria's Secret catalogue at one end of the sexual excitement graph. And, speaking of graphs, you'd put Miss Peebles' grade six math class at the other.

Sex and Miss Peebles seemed worlds apart - even at a time in my life when I knew less about sex than I did about math. Which is saying something. There are Zen masters who spend years attempting to find the emptiness that I attained when Miss Peebles shut the door behind her and said, "Good morning, class." There was not a thought in my head for the ensuing forty minutes. Certainly, Miss Peebles - her hair rolled into what looked like a bullet-proof bun; her eyes, small and piercing and shielded by rimless spectacles -- was a source of no fascination. Neither sex nor arithmetic crossed my mind while in her presence. And yet, every math class, there I was: a hypotenuse more than equal to the sum of the other two sides.