Deep down, Dulaney said, he liked the call -- the kids were so excited -- but why would he want Mounts to know that? Unwritten rule no. 1 for men's friendships: Never tell your best friend he is right about anything when you know he'll make you pay for it, like, forever.

Josh Mounts and Jeremy Dulaney are just 25 but they have been best friends since meeting -- it was probably on the first day of second grade -- while playing four-square at recess under the watchful eye of Miss Carpenter at Deep Springs Elementary.

Together as boys they discovered the beauty of Nintendo when there still was beauty in Nintendo. In daily conversation, they practiced and perfected the art of talking man smack. They cannot for the life of them remember talking much about their emotions -- and they're too young to have shared much tragedy -- but they do care immensely that the Bengals are doing really well this year.

And let's face it: We're in the midst of a decade-long girlfriend renaissance. With flighty books like The Girlfriends Guide to ... selling like hotcakes and with such weighty thinkers as Ellen Goodman elevating girl talk to "the work of life" in her book, I Know Just What You Mean, what with Sex and the City cable endurance, with real university studies on the science of the power of girlfriends, with doctors saying girlfriends are better for your immune system than drugs, well, male relationships have been defined, at best, as wanting. Men's friendships' best hope for scientific or popular discussion was a kind of pseudo-analysis of the inner workings of the apartment life of Chandler Bing and Joey Tribbiani.

The implication has been, of course, that women are just better at friendship. Social neuroscientists are now starting to question that assumption. For starters, they say that what matters is that men have what they define themselves as real friendships; that is, they have a true social web of support.

Witness Mounts and Dulaney. One man made A's but bombed on his college entrance exams. The other barely slid by, gradeswise, but positively killed on the ACT. One's a self-described "Kennedy Democrat." The other, "a compassionate conservative." One is a graduate of Bryan Station. The other, of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Which means one "is a sellout to the northside." The other, "pure."

Technically separated by geography in their middle school and high school years, they hung out anyway. Mounts, all the while, professing his love for school and how he wanted to be a teacher. Dulaney, dying to get done so he could enlist in the Marines. "There are two kinds of kids. Those who love school and those who hate it. Josh loved it and wants to pass that on. I hated it, so I want to change it."

They found themselves in the same geography and political classes at Lexington Community College, then in the same master's program at the University of Kentucky. They swear they never talked about school in all those years.

They have no idea if they're unusual in that because, they say, men don't talk about their friendships like women do. They don't analyze the relationship. They don't care about matching their moods. The only time they came close to even mentioning the relationship was on Mount's wedding day -- though they swore they would not bring it up again.

Seems if Dulaney had not liked Mounts' choice of a wife, "I'd have had to find a new wife," said Mounts. And if she had not liked Dulaney, "like I said, I'd have had to find a new wife," repeated Mounts.

Mounts showed up in khakis and a nice shirt and Dulaney in torn shirt and shorts. They handed over their rŽsumŽs. Mounts couldn't stop laughing. Pretty soon after that, Mounts got a call for an interview. In he went, the interviewer began, "Well, Mr. Dulaney, tell us about ..."

The two men see each other six days out of seven. Mounts' neighbors know Jeremy by name. The men shop together because "women don't shop right." One had to introduce the other to suits. One has to explain rap to the other. Dulaney is the better cook. Mounts is the better athlete. One is religious. The other is not. Mounts is married. Dulaney is referred to simply as "the last domino" because he has yet to ask his girlfriend for a commitment.

Unwritten rule no. 3 about men's friendships: While female friends give validation and encouragement, male friends give advice and male loyalty.

Every day, the two men labor in classrooms across the hall from each other trying to teach eighth-grade social sciences to the randomly interested 13-year-olds at Edythe J. Hayes Middle School. As colleagues, they share ideas about how to persuade these kids -- "to them, the future is lunch" -- to care about the future of this country as well as its past, to understand its gifts and their civic responsibilities. And every day during football season, they share the field as they try to show the aspiring second team Panthers how to act like a team, how to protect each other and how to go the distance.

The Edythe J. Hayes Middle School Panther B Team was up by a touchdown. They had the ball. Last play of the game against another Lexington area middle school's junior squad. All they had to do, said Panther Coach Jeremy Dulaney, was tell the quarterback to take a knee.

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