The List

There comes a time in every girl's life when she makes The List.

And I bet you know which list I'm talking about -- I just have to say "The List."

The date: Sometime in early 1991.
The place: My law school dorm room.
The characters: Four female law students.
The sad but true fact: We were completely sober.

One of us had read someplace that Pierce Brosnan was "probably one of the five sexiest male celebrities on the planet." I questioned the premise and posed the question to the group -- surely we can come up with five more, er, list-worthy fellows.

And so, names started being thrown around. The first few were easy and added to the list by general acclamation. And then there were the disagreements -- one person proposed a name, and the rest of us shot it down. Or, worse, the rest of us laughed. We ended up with not one list, but four. And there were rules for each list. (Oh MAN, we were such lawyer larvae.)

List One: Sexy famous dudes. Required the vote of at least two of us. (Back in 1991, this list was headed by Kyle MacLachlan and Cary Elwes.)
List Two: Famous dudes who were previously List One material, but had since, er, grown old somewhat less than gracefully. Again, a vote of two was required. (E.g., Redford & Newman.)
List Three: Men who, at one point in our lives, one of us actually thought was List One Worthy, but we have since come to see the error of our ways. (Much giggling involved in the manufacture of this list, which included such stud-muffins as Don Johnson and Dudley Moore.)
List Four: Frequently the compromise for names proposed for List One which could not get the second vote, this list was men who were List One material in a single role, but didn't quite make the cut when out of character. (Tom Hulce and Kevin Kline are on this list, although I wish I'd written down the roles.)

Yes, we actually wrote these down. And yes, I kept custody of the lists. For several years afterward, they'd get updated by phone call or email.

I pretty much lost touch with the other three women, and the List faded from existence. The odd thing is, though, I actually still use List Terminology. After a friend thoughtfully left a copy of the Vanity Fair with Viggo Mortensen on my desk, I said, appreciatively, "Now I'd consider a motion to promote him from List Four to List One," and I realized nobody knew what the hell I was talking about.