Boy, if I had 50 cents for every time I started a sentence with those words...

Okay, so I'd still be pretty poor. Counting the first line of this column, that would make it, let me see, exactly one time I've used it.

I've always accepted as a peculiar quirk the fact that my brain is unable to even entertain the imaginary, purely hypothetical scenario of reversing my sexual polarity.

I don't know how many guys have the same problem, but when someone asks me - this question tends to come from women - which guy I would like to go out with presuming I was a woman, my mind goes blank.

(Of course, my mind is not particularly full under normal circumstances, which is why I write a newspaper column.)

Women certainly don't appear to have this mental block. From what I can tell, most women have already spent considerable time deliberating and discussing who they would be attracted to if they were male.

Just ask any woman.

For example, I am willing to bet anyone $5 cash that Queen Elizabeth II would be able to answer that question without the slightest hesitation. (I'm going to need video proof before I pay up.)

Anyway, I was contemplating this particular gender issue this week, not for any parliamentary reason, but because of this fascinating unprovoked e-mail a colleague sent me.

Here, without revealing his name lest he kills me, I produce the following unedited excerpt:

'I have a crush on the Japanese actor Takuya Kimura after I saw him in the Japanese drama Beautiful Life.

'He played a cool, aloof and talented hairstylist (but an underdog in the salon) who fell for a terminally ill girl (which makes him so very noble!) He's my idol ever since!'

But he (my colleague not Kimura) made it clear that 1. he was straight and 2. he did not like Mr Kimura in a romantic way.

Rather it was that he found the Japanese heart-throb so unbelievably cool that he wanted to hang out with him, like forever.

It was what he termed a 'man crush'.

Call me a social holdout with cruel but handsome eyes if you must, but I had never, until that e-mail, even heard of the term.

So I did a quick Google search, and what do you know, this kind of thing turns out to be quite common. There are thousands and thousands of sites with loads of people quite publicly declaring their platonic 'man crushes'.

I was stunned at first. But then I started seeing it everywhere.

Batman and Robin clearly had some man crushing going on, as did Starsky and Hutch, and the characters in nearly every movie involving Will Farrell - Talladega Nights and Blades Of Glory to name but two.

I wondered if I, too, was capable of having a man crush. Have I been in denial all this while?

I mean, I've always sort of looked up to professional footballer Ryan Giggs.

The Manchester United player has got amazing skills, supreme loyalty to the club and in 1999, he scored a spectacular solo goal against Arsenal in the semi-final of the FA Cup.

Often, when I am daydreaming, I am brought back to that glorious moment when he ran around five Arsenal players to slam the ball in the back of net. It was pure magic. I could have hugged him.

Wait up. Did I just say that? Maybe this man crush thing really has more to it than I thought.

Maybe, just maybe idolising Kimura isn't that embarrassing after all, and is merely an expression of male admiration for a successful man.

Nah, it is still very embarrassing. If he were my man crush, I certainly wouldn't be prepared to tell anyone, let alone record it forever in an e-mail that can be easily forwarded to the whole office. (Just kidding.)

So maybe there are limits to this phenomenon.

One ground rule I have just come up with is this: The object of the man crush must also be someone other men are capable of looking up to.

So while I think it might be acceptable to have a giant poster of Ryan Giggs or U2 lead singer Bono on your bedroom wall, the same does not apply to Orlando Bloom.

But other than that, I guess I have now bought into this 'man crush' concept.

I am willing to accept that it's totally possible for a straight man to have a platonic crush on another man.

I also seem to have semi-admitted a personal man crush on a certain footballer - quite some progress since the start of this column. I guess all that's left now is to ask myself...

Shucks, my mind went blank again.

jeremyau@sph.com.sg