As I write this, it’s 5 in the morning, and I’m once again questioning my masculinity.

I was sound asleep in my bed about two hours ago, when I awoke to a horrible screeching noise. It was the wind, screaming through the door in our bedroom, which leads to our balcony.

For some reason, something was loose on either the screen door or the regular door, and it was creating this horrible, high-pitched whine every time another gust hit.

As I stood there, in my pajama bottoms, fat, looking helplessly at the door, Cindy rolled over in the bed and said something that sounded like, “What the fuck?” Then rolled back the other way.

If I didn’t fix the damn door, neither of was going to get any sleep. And I had to get on a plane to go to DC to teach Integrating Print and Online. I had to fix this damn door, and I had to fix it right away.

But I can’t fix anything. I don’t have that gene. I was born without it. Once, while trying to hang some blinds, I stabbed myself in the forearm with a steak knife, and had to go to the hospital for stitches.

Wondering what I was doing with a steak knife? I didn’t even know where we kept the screwdrivers, so I was improvising. I still have the scar.

If you’re a guy, you’re supposed to be able to fix things. I can cook . . . boy, can I cook. And I can pick out a good bottle of wine from a wine list. But I can’t fix a damn thing.

If you put me on that show, “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy,” I could probably show the Queers a thing or two.

Once, I was on my boat with my pal David Murray, and we got pulled over by the Coast Guard for a routine check. “Can you open up the engine compartment?” the officer asked me, so he could check something.

I looked at Dave. He looked back at me. I didn’t say anything. As realization set in, a look of total and utter disgust came across his face.

“You don’t know where the engine is, do you?” he said.

I’d only had the boat for about four years . . . how the hell was I supposed to know where the engine was?

Every year at my son’s school, he is given $20 to buy gifts for his family on Kris Kringle day. When he was four (four!) he gave me a canvass tool belt. After I immediately tried it on, he said:

“Maybe you could put your kitchen spoons in there.”

Again, he was four.

I long ago learned to accept this . . . but every once in a while, I sicken myself. Like when I’m standing in front of a loose door that absolutely must be fixed, and I can’t fix it.

After looking at the door for a while (yes, I actually felt the hinges—as if, were they loose, I would be able to do anything about it), I just kind of shrugged, and went out to the kitchen.

That’s where I was, standing at the sink eating a cold turkey burger for breakfast, when I heard this from the bedroom:

“Jesus!”

It was Cindy. She was up. I heard her come stomping down the hallway. She walked into the kitchen, ignored me completely, opened up the “tool drawer,” (a mysterious place I’ve never been to) and took out what looked like a cordless screwdriver. Or maybe it was a drill. Hell, it could have been a souped-up vibrator for all I could tell.

She then stomped back to the bedroom where, within minutes, I heard some whirring noises, and some banging noises. I finished my breakfast burger and turned on the computer to check e-mail.

Five minutes later, Cindy came back out to the kitchen, slammed the tool back into the drawer, and went to bed. To her credit, she never said a word to me. Though I can imagine what she was thinking:

“Keep stuffing your face, panty-waist. I’ll fix the damn door.” Or,

“Maybe when you’re done eating, you can go to Home Depot and buy yourself a set of testicles.” Or,

“Hey Nancy, why don’t you whip us up an omelet with fresh chives, like you do, while I break out the tools and fix our house.”

She managed to fix the door. At 3:30 in the morning, during a wicked rain storm, with just one tool, she got ‘er done. You could give me perfect weather, a complete tool set, the personal coaching of Bob Villa, and a solid week. I still couldn’t fix it.

Sometimes, it’s hard to be a guy. Especially a metrosexualized one.

One of the weird things about being a writer is that you never know when “inspiration” will strike you.

I’ve been known to scramble out of the shower and run dripping wet and naked into my office to get a pen so I could write an idea down before I forgot it (sorry for the visual, ladies).

I’ve woken in the middle of the night and scribbled down notes on the inside cover of paperbacks, on my hands, on the cat . . . once I wrote a note on Cindy’s ass in the middle of the night, because it was the closest thing to me at the time. None of your business why it was so close.

For some reason, I get a lot of ideas at the airport. Probably because I’m sitting there drinking and watching the freak parade. Of course, I never remember to bring a notepad, so whenever I get to my destination and sober up, I usually have about 30 bar cocktail napkins with notes scribbled all over them.

About half the time, I can actually remember what it was that I wanted to write about. And about half the time, it's something worth writing.

This happened to me last week. I was trying to fly home from Washington DC, but my flight kept getting delayed. By the time it was canceled, at 10 p.m., I had been drinking in the airport bar for almost five hours.

When I finally got home the next day, I dumped out my briefcase and seventeen cocktail napkins came tumbling out. I could read about 14 of them. And of the 14 that I could read, I could make sense of about 11. The other ones had weird phrases on them that I don’t remember writing, like “anal sex with a cat,” and stuff like that. Don’t ask.

It’s kind of interesting to follow the path from note-taking to column writing. If you ever wonder where the loony ideas for this blog come from, here’s a disturbing look inside the mind of a disturbed writer.

Here, word for word, is what was on those cocktail napkins.

Napkin #1: macho prick, dyke, Orioles
Napkin #2: you didn’t ask me Mets!
Napkin #3: loud talker no way out panic panic panic
Napkin #4: wine, homo, rub my crotch, paul newman hand job
Napkin #5: blast classical music might not work
Napkin #6: not gay still fake phone call
Napkin #7: failure communicate
Napkin #8: gave opening paper shit
Napkin #9: darwin evolution ipod no good

That’s what I had to deal with when I got home. Now, at the time, in the bar, all of those thoughts made perfect sense to me. I had the column practically written in my head. At the time I thought it would be pretty funny. It’s probably not, but it’s an interesting look inside the mind of a strange writer.

Here’s the column that came from those odd notes.

Beaten by a professional

When it comes to avoiding talking to people at airports, nobody is better than me.

Since I spend so much time in airport bars, I’ve learned many, many tactics for fending off the obnoxious salespeople and lonely corporate types who don’t bring any reading material to the bar, and as such have nothing to do but talk to ME.

The iPod is a great tool for avoiding conversations . . . but guess what? It’s not good enough anymore. Like some kind of messed up Darwinian evolution process, the Airport Talkers are getting more and determined to fight through my best defenses.

It used to be that if I had my iPod on, it was end game. Nobody would dare interrupt. But in the last six months, I’ve had no less than five people actually start talking to me anyway. They’re relentless.

So you’ve got to have a backup plan. But, the other day, I ran into someone who could not be stopped. I thought I was the best . . . but he was better. The unstoppable force blew away the unmovable object.

I was sitting there, drinking a bad airport martini, iPod headphones firmly in place, pretending to listen to music while really eavesdropping on the couple next to me, whom I suspected of having an affair, when he sat down.

He had the stink of an Airport Talker about him. I can smell them from forty feet away. Luckily, there was someone on the other side of him, and the Airport Talker immediately struck up a conversation with the other guy. I was safe. For now.

But, after 15 minutes, the other guy left. Sure enough, the Airport Talker turned to me. He was just about to steamroll past my iPod defense when, thank God, his phone rang.

He answered it, and for the next ten minutes treated everyone around him to a loud, profane, obnoxious conversation. Here are some snippets—and remember, he is saying these things loud enough for everyone in the bar to hear:

“I don’t know what her fucking problem is. I swear to God, she’s got a pipe up her ass about this. I think she needs to get laid. But shit, she’s probably a dyke, you know?”

“How are your Orioles doing? They beat the fucking Yankees, I was glad to see that.”

“You know what? The fucking guy doesn’t know how communicate, that’s his problem.”

“Hey, you didn’t ask me how my Mets are doing!”

And on, and on, and on. And the worst part was, I knew that as soon as he was done with his call, he would start talking to me in that same loud voice, and I would be forced to engage in the conversation, and be smeared by association.

So while he talked, I prepared myself. I was going to the mattresses. Pulling out all stops.

First, I put some Mozart on the iPod, loud enough so that I knew the sound would leak out and he would hear it when he hung up the phone.

Second, I pulled out my crossword puzzle. This is one of my better props. For some reason, people are intimidated by someone doing a crossword puzzle, and hesitant to disturb them.

Next, I ordered a glass of white wine. Now, everything was in place.

I call this my “Gay Strategy,” and it’s a perfect defense for overly macho salesmen types. If they think you might be gay, they usually avoid you.

So when he got off the phone, he would be faced with a man sipping white wine, listening to Mozart, and doing a crossword puzzle. I'm thinking about getting a fake earing, or maybe a fake rainbow tattoo that I can slap on in a hurry if I need to.

And if that wasn’t enough, I was prepared to go even further. I was willing to do the “fake phone call.” That’s where I punch in a set of random numbers, and say things like:

“Oh, let me tell you, is there a finer specimen than Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke? Him and I wouldn’t have any failure to communicate, that’s for sure!”

And, “I tell you what . . . I wouldn’t be rubbing his belly after he ate all those eggs! I’d be rubbing something else!”

(For the record, I am not gay, but I would be with Paul Newman as he was in Cool Hand Luke. Just because he’s perfect.)

So I was ready for this bozo. Everything was in place. The cell phone was within reach. I had left no cracks in my defense. Or so I thought.

I forgot about the paper. I had finished my newspaper, and had set it to one side. It was the only opening he needed.

When he finished his phone call, he tapped me on the shoulder. I cried inside. I took one earplug out of one ear and raised what would be my eyebrows at the man, if I had eyebrows.

“Are you done with that paper? Mind if I read it?”

“Go ahead,” I said. “I’m done with it.”

And before I could even get my iPod plug back in, he had grabbed the paper and launched into a conversation with me about how security procedures are different from airport to airport.

And I was stuck. He didn’t pick up on my gay vibe, obviously. And I couldn’t very well start making a call in the middle of his talking to me, so I couldn’t pull out the Cool Hand Luke card.

The only thing I could hope for was that somebody would call me . . . and that didn’t happen. So I spent 25 minutes in hell.

I was beat. Beaten by a neglected paper. I know better than that. When you’re done with the paper, you ask the bartender to throw it away. You never leave it on the bar, where people can use it for an opening gambit.

That was a rookie mistake. Bush league. It’s right up there with the time when I lost my wallet right before a trip, so I borrowed my son Zach’s Cubs wallet, which is bright blue with a big Cubs logo on it.

You can imagine what that means. That’s right . . . every time I pulled it out to show my ID or give the bartender a credit card, some jagoff jumped in:

“Cubs fan, huh? What do you think about Soriano?” Or,

“You guys got Piniella, huh? What do you think of him?”

Never, ever give the scum a glimpse into your personal life or your hobbies. And never, ever leave a newspaper laying around where someone can see it.

Lessons learned the hard way.