I ? Bronson The long and short of Red Sox watching BY CAITLIN SHETTERLY

Back when the Red Sox seemed to be losing, two women and a straight guy were at Rivalries. It must have been the tight pants and cups, bulging thighs and sumptuous biceps flashing across screens in every direction. Or maybe it was that we wanted to do anything but watch our team lose again. Or maybe it was the combined stress of Red Sox drama PLUS the election.

Anyway, the other woman said something about having been on a date with a guy who (she was afraid) might be small in the package department. His hands were slightly delicate and "tiny" (I think was the word).

GUY: Well, do girls really care?

WOMAN #1: Of course we care. How about you? Do you know if you’re big or small?

WOMAN #2: Don’t guys know this stuff?

GUY: Well it’s not like we really see each other like that to compare . . . I mean it seems like women would know more about this than we do.

WOMAN#1: You’re hedging...

GUY: Okay. There was this article in Men’s Health and it said that in order to find out, you needed to stick it inside a toilet-paper roll. If you were too big for the roll, then you were large, too small then you’re small.

(OUT OF CONTROL LAUGHING AND THEN...)

WOMAN #2: Soooo?

GUY: I was too big for the roll.

Still, guys tell me they thought the whole "size matters" thing wasn’t true. Well, yes, of course there are exceptions, but I can tell you that modest endowment is a much-cackled-about topic on girls night. Here are the things that will make a guy exempt from being ridiculed for having a small penis: a large, self-confident personality; powerful un-wimpy behavior; kindness that is not snivelly . . . do we see a theme, here?

By this I do not mean that we have to be talking gargantuan. I mean, really, how many guys actually HAVE to wear Magnums? The truth is that if a girl likes you or even wants to sleep with you, while you’re having sex she’ll tell you that "you’re so big." And then make noises to support this thought. I told Mitch this last weekend when he flew out from LA to meet me in Boston. We were eating hot dogs and fries from room service at the Marriott Hotel in Copley Plaza and talking about his dating life.

He almost dropped his dog and then said, "You mean you lie?" Of course I mean we lie. Because we know that guys want to hear this. "So you mean guys could be running around thinking they’re big and women are just lying to them?"

YES.

Low points for me in the penis department: large personality with meaty and slightly flaccid; thin and pointy on a verbal jabber; short but not so thick on an actor; thumb size on an Internet guy. High points: an alabaster white, slightly square beautiful thing on a French guy named Olivier when I was 18; my college boyfriend who, although having a "quick" problem, was perfect in all dimensions.

I thought the topic was done and buried until the three of us were back at Rivalries watching the Red Sox make history. I had since decided that I was in love with Arroyo, who may be thin and tiny on TV, but is actually 6’5" and weighs 190 (I googled him). I then made my own tank top with red and black permanent markers that read, "I Y Arroyo." I think I fell for Arroyo right around the time A-Rod hit the ball out of his mitt and gave the George Bush "I own a lumber company?" look and shrugged his shoulders like everyone in the world knew that Arroyo was just being John Kerry-ish and shrill.

So in the meat market of Rivalries, my two friends and I watch men in tight pants run around the screen while other men find time to hit on the two girls in between beer swigs. Again, we get back to package size during the commercial breaks. We try to see if we can tell by just looking at how a person walks and we try to define what walk means what. I had already tried unsuccessfully to demonstrate this to Mitch in our hotel room.

Then I looked across the room and saw a familiar face. A tall dark-haired Aidan Quinn and I locked eyes. He smiled and mouthed the words Last year. Same game. Same place. And then I remembered him. We had spent the whole night watching the game, drinking beer and talking.

He said, "What have you been up to?"

Well . . . how do you encapsulate a year? So I asked him "What have you been up to?"

"Well, I got married," he said.

And another one bites the dust. Ah well. The Red Sox won and people danced in the streets and I thought of Roger Angell’s "Agincourt and After," where New Englanders celebrate a Red Sox win in all the hills and dales and I went home to read my volume of Ibsen and contemplate Nora.

Wrong time, wrong place, "But someday," Mitch told me on the phone before I nodded off, "It will be right, Cait." Like generations of Red Sox fans waiting, since 1918, mind you, I keep my head up and my eyes open . . . a toilet paper roll handy, just in case.

Caitlin Shetterly can be reached at bramhallsquare@yahoo.com. Stay tuned for the "10 Sexiest Men in Portland," to be revealed in the Nov. 12 issue.