Last week, the AMA released the findings of a study on America’s sex life. How did we fare? Not well, I’m afraid.

According to the study, American sex has less zip than a button fly. One-third of men and two-fifths of women are either sexually dysfunctional or just plain disinterested.

Although it was revealed afterward that the study was funded by the company that sells Viagra, some doctors have commented that its findings are probably not far off. Sexually speaking, we have some problems.

How could that be possible in the country that gave the world John Wayne, Elvis Presley and Baywatch?

Like the Duke, America is bigger than all outdoors. We’re the only country to ever drop the BOMB on anyone — twice! Now if that ain’t virility, I don’t know what is.

Like Elvis, America gyrates wildly to its own primal rhythms: wild, uninhibited, naive and even self-destructive at times. In short, sexy.

Finally, like “Baywatch,” America is capable of throwing good taste out the window in the cause of promoting equality between the sexes. Women can be lifeguards just as well as men! While being thus edified, we’re rewarded with camera shots that make it possible to count the goosebumps on Pamela Anderson’s nipples.

So there we have America’s image: We’re virile, we’re sexy and we’ve no shortage of scantily clad beach bunnies exhibiting our commitment to gender equality. How could we possibly suffer difficulties in the bedroom?

Perhaps the answer lies in the chasm between American fantasy and American reality. For the best examples of the American fantasy of human sexuality, we should go to the movies.

Do you remember the bedroom scene in “Lethal Weapon 2” with Riggs (Gibson) and the much younger, blonde supermodel he picks up in a grocery store? The two have just finished having sex. Soon, he feels himself getting aroused yet again.

“You’re not gonna’ believe this,” he says and declares that it’s time for “the seventh inning.” What a man!

What’s telling here is that some screenwriter actually felt it necessary to tell us how many times our hero can ejaculate in an evening!

American men love to hear such testimonials to our sexual abilities. If our movies are any indication, we need to hear such testimonials quite frequently. How many times have we heard movie vixens, freshly ravished by James Bond, breathlessly sigh, “Oh, James!”

Such patronizing appeals to our vanity are insulting. Nevertheless, we gobble them up.

If you’re a woman reading this, and you’ve seen your man wax rhapsodic about Shaquille O’Neal, William Wallace or Captain Kirk, I suspect you know exactly what I’m talking about.

There’s a brand of male hero worship out there that degrades those who buy into it. It places “Men” on so high a pedestal that we can’t possibly measure up as individuals. This is why the thought of our girlfriends or wives having an affair with another man terrifies us.

“What if he’s better than I am?”

Most men would rather hear that their significant other was hit by a bus than that she’s been cheating on him. But that affair is bound to come. We simply don’t treat one another well. It sometimes seems we’ve forgotten how.

Our Hollywood culture has helped this along, exaggerating our differences until finally we are little more than one another’s exotic pets. We are alien and incomprehensible to one another, as if we come from different planets.

Supposedly, it doesn’t have anything to do with the complexity of human desire and the frequently perverse dynamic of any close relationship. No, it’s because we are SOOOO different.

The differences exist, but they are small and deserve to be cherished. Instead, we blow them all out of proportion and complain about them.

“Women!” he sighs, exasperated.

“Men!” is her exhausted response.

If we’re so different, why have we come up with so many artificial means of distinguishing between the sexes? For her, we’ve got inch-long, plastic fingernails that need to be glued-on and painted. For him we have steroids. We have socially-militated acceptable hair length, at least for those of us who would like to get jobs.

Women: You shave there and there!

Men: Shave there only! Women: Pluck those. Men: Let them grow. Clothing, make-up, life-threatening eating disorders and surgery are required to make our differences more pronounced. And yet we buy into it.

No wonder we don’t get along in bed.

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James O’Donnell is a graduate student in painting, drawing and printmaking from Mesa, Ariz.