by KRISTIAN GRAVENOR

I was munching downtown at Basha's near the corner window and noticed the return of the summertime ritual where male diners secretly try to peek down the haltertops of pedestrians below.

This is a sure sign that another glorious Montreal summer is almost upon us and, as your columnist and the only person in the world you can fully trust, I offer some tips on how to behave.

Tip #1: It's time to start respecting promiscuous women. Montreal is blessed with many sexually friendly females and as the season of love and tawdry encounters approaches, we need to rethink our unexplicable reflex to denounce them.

Admittedly some guys might have a personal axe to grind against a specific cheating woman. Some less adventurous females might feel that their more generous sisters undermine the sex cartel that leads guys to pick up dinner tabs.

But it's an enduring and staggering paradox that so many young studs speak ill of women who offer them the pleasure of their intimacy.

So I scratched my head and e-mailed an expert. Stephen Beckerman, a Penn State anthropologist who studies societies that respect such women, confirms that young men here are prejudiced against such women. "WHEN I GIVE PRESENATIONS ABOUT THIS RESEARCH, WOMEN ARE INTRIGUED TO FASCINATED, MEN INTRIGUED TO SOMEWHAT UPSET."

Yes, he writes in capitals.

One day that will hopefully change. We'll erect a statue next to Louis Cyr's in honour of the farm girls who moved to the city and became urban nymphomaniacs, providing this city the sexy aura we treasure. One day at the funeral of some old woman, others will give tribute: "She was incredibly generous, she must have had sex with 5,000 men in her lifetime."

Tip #2: When you get hired at your summertime employment, don't be a suck. People too often get a job and transform from humans into robots, acting like oppressive goofs, under the comfy rationalization that they have to perform such tasks because they need the money. Just because you're getting paid, it doesn't mean you check your morality at the door.

Tip #3: Learn to rollerblade. Walking is slow, public transit passive, bikes get stolen and compress your reproductive organs. You need some handy blades.

Entering businesses on blades remains in the grey zone, however. Most employees pretend they didn't notice you. I always browbeat managers who act like anti-blade Gestapo. "If you allow wheelchairs then you have to allow rollerblades," is my usual initial destabilizing opening non-sequitur. "Shouldn't stability be the ultimate criteria? How am I more dangerous than a dizzy customer subject to falls?" And so on. I kick up a loud fuss. My latest device is a typewritten, signed commitment promising to accept financial responsibility for any damage caused. I'll let you know if that works.

Tip #4: Write a play. As a course leader in the Thomas More Institute theatre class, I've seen over 70 plays over the last four years and some of them are brilliant.

Once in a while you see a play that makes you wonder if they're running out of scripts. McGill recently produced Orra: A Gothic Tragedy by Joanna Baillie, a bug-eyed Scot who died in 1851. The play had never been performed in her lifetime, perhaps because she oversprinkled it with unbearable retrospeak "thou"s and "hither"s. The costume, direction and stage were beautiful but at a certain moment the stage was full of sensitive young male actors in Elizabeth-era silk tunics seriously discussing "crackling faggots on a midnight fire." This line induced an inappropriate giggling fit reminiscent of the epileptic seizures my daddy used to have. Thankfully I wasn't wearing rollerblades.

• • •

Time to say so long, good luck and goodbye to two departing Montreal treasures. Ibi Kaslik, author of the breakthrough novel Skinny, is relocating to Toronto. Peter Sandmark - rockabilly idol, videographer and genius behind the Slum Dog cartoon that long appeared in this paper - is moving to Victoria, B.C. They'll be missed.

Comments? kgravy@openface.ca