To Be A Man, A Boy Must

Some Of Football's Gaudiest Displays Of Manliness Are Purely Aesthetic. It's Not What Players Do, It's How They Look Doing It.

Long Before It Legally Served Me, The Bar Saved Me. It Restored My Faith When I Was A Boy, Tended Me As A Teenager, And When I Was A Young Man The Bar Embraced Me.

In Manhasset You Were Either Yankees Or Mets, Rich Or Poor, Sober Or Drunk...you Were 'gaelic' Or 'garlic," As One Schoolmate Told Me, And I Couldn't Admit, To Him Or Myself, That I Had Both Irish And Italian Ancestors.

I Began Dividing Life In Absolutes... Things And People Were Either Perfectly Bad, Or Perfectly Good, And When Life Didn't Obey This Black-and-white Rule, When Things Or People Were Complex Or Contradictory, I Pretended Otherwise. I Turned Every Defeat Into A Disaster, Every Success Into An Epic Triumph, And Separated All People Into Heroes Or Villains. Unable To Bear Ambiguity, I Built A Barricade Of Delusions Against It.

History Is The Narrative Of People Searching For A Place To Go.