REAL MEN DON'T NEED TO WEAR LOW-RISE JEANS.

Byline: Arthur R. Vinsel Local View

THAT whirring sound you hear is the late, venerated Levi Strauss spinning in his grave - and the faint clickety-clack noise is the brass rivets in his jeans rattling against the casket walls.

I'd estimate Mr. Strauss is rotating over the fashion industry's treatment of his menswear invention dating back to 1849 and the California Gold Rush.

The fashion industry is still after our gold, 157 years later.

They now want $130 for a pair of denim pants, at least an Italian fashion house called ``Diesel'' does.

There's a name to conjure with. What does diesel remind you of? You may think of a racy, fire-engine-red Peterbolt cabover with speed baffle on top, chrome exhaust pipes and sexy racing wheels plus a throaty roar.

To me, Diesel doesn't bring to mind anything but a bald-headed guy in greasy coveralls with gray chest hair sprouting profusely out the neck, an old-fashioned hernia truss under there somewhere and truck-stop hamburger onions on his breath. My stepfather was a diesel mechanic.

The $130 Diesel jeans are designed to be worn ``dangerously low,'' a phrase freighted with several kinds of speculative intrigue. Dangerous to whom or what? Morals? Good taste? Hard-earned, upper-middle-age male self-satisfaction?

I don't know if I'm ready for dangerous pants - how about treacherous trousers designed to give a male translation to that saucy look for young women: bare midriff and taut, supple skin. Also maybe a peek at your Calvin briefs or pinstriped Fruit of the Loom boxers, depending on where you buy masculine lingerie.

The problem is, not all men are created equal and neither are women. A few years of Happy Hour beers at the corner bar or 2.5 childbirths and a daily Haagen-Dazs addiction quickly separates men from boys and stretch- marked matrons from girls.

Good sense and good taste, however, rarely go hand in hand, and the inevitable lies down the highway. (We might as well stick with the trucking image.)

Grown men with turkey-neck wattles and pot bellies will begin wearing low-rise jeans, dimly remembering that old lie about ``clothes making the man.''

Some clothes will do that. Ask any circus clown.

Shortly - unless reason and sanity prevail - a wave of hysterical laughter will also be audible. It will be women across the land, reacting to this groundswell of men old enough to know better who make a last-gasp grasp at lost teenhood by dressing like boys half their age. Some men anyway, hanging close onto those ``carefree years'' for dear life.

Personally, my bloody fingernails have pretty much healed from that fool's errand on which fashion designers periodically dispatch legions of losers in denial about their flagging testosterone levels.

I just grew up mentally, a process helped along by the adult male tendency to grow out horizontally. I still don't like being a snug 36 waist when I was a loose 34 five years ago, but I live with it. No, I don't have to stand before a mirror to see my toes and other parts, but that unobstructed view I've had for 60-years plus is becoming threatened.

Be that as it may, the fashion industry is bringing us American males the low-rise denim jean and its handmaiden accessory - underwear tailored to that daring look. A recent Boston Globe fashion article suggests saucily that with extreme low-rise jeans we men may have to opt for no underwear at all.

Back in the 1980s, men and women with six-figure incomes began wearing jeans decorated with holes. As you may recall, the more and bigger the holes the more fashionable the jeans.

So, is wearing pants so low and tight that there's no room for underwear a sign of wealth or fashion? I don't believe I could afford boxers or jockey briefs, after I've spent $130 for a pair of jeans invented by Levi Strauss for adventure-seekers in California's gold fields.

That pair of Diesels costs about five times the price for my first sport jacket, back when I had two dress shirts and one plain black tie.

Today, I own no jeans but wear casual slacks like Dockers, Haggars and comparable knockoffs from Mervyn's. I have enough dress shirts to wear a different one every day for four weeks and probably 200 neckties: solids, regimental stripes, paisleys, foulards and raffish woven wools.

I'm just an ordinary guy who puts his pants on one leg at a time - but at least I know what kind of pants a real man wears.