IT HAS BEEN SAID by frustrated lovers and even meat hunters who break mirrors and fling frying pans in the morning, that men and women have been messing with each other's minds at least since Helen of Troy. And despite the computechnic heralding of this supercool Space Age of Sex, love and sex still bring on concommitant confusion, loathing, ambivalence and ugliness.

No dramas need to be enacted--especially one that never gives the answer but charges $10 anyway. Sexual Perversity in Chicago never really gets to the point. It is a trite medley of some stereotyped, six-pack guys, their neurotic quests for orgasmic relief, and creeping cynicism.

But I'm tired of "Let-me-tell-you-how-I-got-laid" stories. I've heard all about whips and delights and pederasty and binoculars. I want some answers. It's 1978. This is getting quite serious.

Some of the answers can be found over a beer at the bar around the block from the Charles Playhouse. Field work in any research is essential, but the playhouses of Boston's theater district can do no more than mimic the action going on outside their doors.

The hooker was being hassled by some drunken old family man, and she started trembling when his voice broke and he called her a cocktease.

"Look I'm with my boyfriend here, so go away."

But when he left after the two-ton bartender told him to scram, she lit up a cigaette and talked furiously about professionalism.

"They're all old men," she said. "And married. They want you to do all the things their wives can never do for them. And when it comes to the time, they don't know what they want. But I wouldn't be doing this if it weren't for the money. I just feel like I've never been loved in my entire life."

Her beautiful body was mopping up all the business in the place, and she, a professional professional, insisted that sex is never perverse, just misunderstood.

"If only people could communicate, get out of their bodies and not be afraid of themselves," she said.

The suburban business executive sitting next to me at the play laughed at every ruse in the drama, but held his tongue when it became all too real.

"I really was reached," he said, "because it was an in-depth commentary revealing some nagging contradictions in what we like to call a sexual revolution or a more carefree, problem-free era."

Sexual Perversity, David Mamet's Obie-winner, is very good at stating the hang-ups that follow society's tangled and neandrethal delineation of sex roles. There are numerous obnoxious stories behind bars and superficial sighs and women in anguish; even a cute relationship ending with the lovers calling each other "lousy lays."

Danny and Bernie (Peter Kovner and Joseph Wilkins) are two office buddies who wind up competing for the wildest story and cruelest screw, as their two female counterparts, Deborah and Joan (Deborah Strang and Laura Hepner) feed on each other's disillusionment.

Danny is really a genteel, quiet guy who takes an earful too much of Bernie's ego--enough for him to ruin his relationship with sweet Deborah. Bernie, of course, never gets beyond his graphic stories.