Back in April, a pall fell over the entire T-mag office. And it all stemmed from the emotional vibes of one man — Tim Patterson.

Larry — the character played by Robert Downey Jr. on Fox’s hit TV show, Ally McBeal — had just dumped Ally. It seemed that Ally was destined to spend another summer alone.

Tim was disconsolate. All he did was stare listlessly out the window, muttering to himself, "Why can’t Ally find love? Why can’t Ally find love?"

His work output stopped, as surely as if had been given some sort of paralyzing nerve block by a crazed neurologist. The plans for the new Methoxy-7 lay strewn about his desk, collecting dust and the residue of spilled Costa Rican coffee. Oh sure, the carbon chains were all neatly lined up on his notepad, but instead of connecting to hydroxy and methoxy groups, they connected to drawings of broken hearts.

And like some horrible retrovirus, the pall spread. Soon, everyone in the office was depressed. The boys in the warehouse, rather than filling Biotest orders, stacked up canisters of Advanced Protein in little makeshift igloos and napped the day away. The graphics guys took all their action figures out of their packages and used them to stage sad little plays where the characters all ended up being phasered by their girlfriends.

I’m no psychologist, but I’ll bet you my autographed picture of Seven of Nine that the office was suffering from an epidemic of low Testosterone — low Testosterone brought about by a severe case of the blues.

So rather than see the company get sucked down the vortex of the toilet, I stripped down to my jock strap and began doing a manly dance up and down the halls, through the warehouse, through the gym, and out the door and around the entire building. Like some Indian shaman, I drove the bad vibes away and like the sky after a summer thunderstorm, the pall cleared.

The next day, Testosterone again flowed freely through everyone’s veins, work resumed, and the company was saved.

I’m a firm believer that mood determines Testosterone levels, and in turn, Testosterone levels determine mood. When bad shit happens, T-levels drop and it becomes all that much harder to shake the funk out of your head. I also believe that the mood is contagious.

There’s certainly plenty of evidence in nature that T levels are tightly tied to mood. According to a study conducted in 1974 by a scientist named Irwin Bernstein, when two monkeys fight, the winner’s T levels rise and the loser’s fall. The winning monkey then has confidence for his next battle, while the losing monkey mopes, and rather than fight again, helps his wife pick out some dust ruffles for their bedroom set.

Similarly, when cichlid fish in Lake Tanganyika fight, the winner’s skin gets brighter, he produces more brain cells, and more Testosterone. Conversely, the loser’s color drains out of him, he dumps brain cells, has his testicles wither, and gets a job greeting other fish as they walk into yuppie fish clothing stores: Hi, my name’s Morty. Welcome to the Gap.

Along the same lines, human studies have shown that tennis players who win tournaments experience an increase in T levels, as do winners of chess tournaments!

I scoff at your endgame strategy, Castle nuts!

Simply put, winning equates to high T and more winning.

Take a look at last year’s National League Champions, the New York Mets. Almost across the board, their stats pale in comparison with last year’s. The roster is pretty much intact, but you’d never guess that they’re the same team. Probably as a result of a poor start this year, they experienced a team-wide drop in T levels, one from which they have yet to recover. Losing caused a drop in T, with its resultant lack of confidence, and the slump became self-perpetuating. As a result, they remain firmly entrenched in next-to-last place with a team batting average that’s among the lowest.

Maybe they should scrap all the blond-hair dye jobs, yank out the earrings, let those silly little manicured goatees spread out across their faces so their mouths don’t look like female private parts, rip the sleeves off their unies, and go medieval for awhile. Have the pitchers throw inside and start one of those baseball fights where everyone shoves each other and throws haymakers that miss each other by two feet — whatever it takes to start the T flowing again.

Even those men that witness a victory by their chosen team or favorite athlete experience increases in Testosterone levels. And, conversely, those same fans experience lower T-levels when their team loses.

I think it’s easy to make a small deductive hop, skip, and jump and assume that winning and losing sports match-ups isn’t the only determinant of T-levels and that victories or losses in business, politics, or life in general affect Testosterone levels and mood.

I think the stock market is suffering from low T. Some stocks dip, investors get scared, and they get cautious. T levels recede like a penis dipped in an ice bath and whammo! Recession.

Yeah, that’s simplistic, but I’m not the only one who thinks that the stock market lives and breathes with consumer confidence, and confidence, whether fiscal or otherwise, often relates back to T.

In fact, I think the entire United States is suffering from low T.

Young men don’t know how to act — nobody taught them how to act. There are no rites of passage. No obstacles to overcome, no tasks given, and no contemplation of what it means to be a man. It’s just suddenly you’re supposed to morph into, starting at about age 13 and finishing up, oh, I don’t know, when you’re about 80 or 90, if you’re lucky. I guess you can tell if someone’s become a man by whether or not he’s made the decision to swing the bill on his baseball cap forward instead of backward.

Even so, one thing seems to be clear, the culture dislikes manly men… or does it? Masculinity is celebrated in movies, but woe be it to anyone that acts like that in real life. Grab some punk by the scruff of the neck and shove his head into a pile of sesame bagels for taking cuts in front of that old lady and you’ll find yourself in jail, after which you’ll be sued by the punk, the owner of the bagel shop where it happened, the bagel anti-defamation society, and probably the old lady, too.

Phooey.

All this indecision about how to act leads to low T, and the low T prevents guys from pulling themselves out of the morass.

Following your instincts — doing manly things — is considered "macho" behavior, macho being a pejorative term. Being aggressive about something is considered to be juvenile or immature, or the result of "Testosterone poisoning." Liking women, liking women a lot, is considered to be "a propensity to wallow in adolescent fantasies."

Hey, wallow in this.

Young boys are being taught to be passive in school, and if it doesn’t sink in, they’re drugged — better to keep the beasts at bay. Better not be yourself sonny, better not be true to your nature because that would mean that we got ourselves a little attitude problem and we’ll have to stick you in that metal shed over there, the one that’s in sun so hot it’ll bake your brain right in its skullpan as if it were a possum pie. That’ll get your mind right, boy.

In fact, can you please tuck your balls and penis in between your legs? I can almost tell that you’re a man. And you, with the exceptionally long dick, shove it between your legs but maybe jam the head of a cabbage patch doll on the other end where it sticks out so the children won’t be frightened.

Sure, the popular culture celebrates manhood, but it’s all a parody. We’ve got shows like The Man Show and magazines like Maxim, but they make a joke about manhood — a good joke, but a joke nonetheless. The message they give is nothing profound, nothing that changes us in a fundamental way that lingers long after we’ve turned off the TV or put the Maxim back in the stack with the other stroke mags.

I think all this malaise is curable, though. All it takes is the occasional lone ballsy high-T guy. In the sports world, having a guy like Michael Jordan on the team was enough to elevate a mediocre band of mostly rag-tag athletes to play beyond what everyone thought they were capable of. Sure, Michael was the greatest player in the game, but his ability, his attitude, his high-T lifted his teammates to extraordinary heights. It resulted in a miraculous string of 6 NBA championships.

A few weeks ago, Chris Shugart wrote about bad atmospheres in some gyms and how it sucks the T out of the average T-man. I’ve got no argument with that, but I think that one man can literally change the atmosphere of whatever environment he’s in. Back in the early days of Gold’s Gym in Venice Beach, California, a certain Austrian would walk in each morning and begin his Testosterone-raising banter. He’d walk in 15 minutes late, throw a towel at the guys warming up in back, and say to his training partners, "Come on, you guys, I’m tired of waiting for you. Let’s get go-ing."

He’d begin ragging on his workout partners and anyone within earshot — in a good-natured way — and if his verbal lifts didn’t inspire people, the way he exercised did. The place would start to percolate with good vibes. The man was and remains a one-man Testosterone band.

I don’t think a guy has to have Arnold’s or Michael’s charisma to bang the Testosterone drum and raise the spirits of everyone around him, whether it be in the sports arena, the gym, the office, or anywhere. Neither do you necessarily have to drop trou and do a manly dance to exorcise the bad juju.

You simply have to take the initiative. Decide that you’re going to shape your environment by making winners out of everyone around you. Do that and you’ll have given your life meaning, purpose, and importance.

And, in addition, it’ll jack up your own Testosterone, and that ain’t bad.

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