THE STORIES: MEN WITHOUT DATES. The place is a seedy country-western bar in lower Manhattan where two young firemen, Sal and Murph, are carousing. They are long-time friends who find themselves at a point of crisis: Murph is about to enter a loveless shotgun marriage and resign from the Fire Department; and Sal, who once saved his buddy's life in the line of duty, is trying to do so again. But Sal, an insatiable womanizer who is as baffled by his conquests as he is drawn to them, is the eternal adolescent and hardly the one to persuade Murph to forego his decision to do the right thing and settle down to a safer, if drabber, line of work. Their debate is complicated by the intrusion of the bartender, an arrogant and paranoid bully who would just as soon fight with his customers as serve them and whose clash with Sal helps instigate the uneasy, but infinitely touching truce that brings the action to its poignant close. (3 men.) SLAM! The scene is the men's room of a dance club in Manhattan's Bowery section. Two young punk rockers, Linc and Mel, both high-school students from Queens, are engaged in an energetic conversation about girls and dancing-the two things of most significance in their present lives.

Both are in revolt against parental authority, as evidenced by their outlandish outfits and pointed remarks, but both are also touchingly concerned about their problematic futures-a dilemma that Linc has decided to deal with by enlisting in the Marines. His announcement shakes Mel, to whom the armed forces are another aspect of a drab establishment that, he thought, he and Linc were determined to resist. And while their carefree banter and zany playfulness resume, there is now a difference-an unspoken but sobering awareness that, young as they are, life is catching up with them and things will never be quite the same again. (2 men.).