Ecce Homo

Behold the man. Flesh and blood. Broken. Passionate.

Baldung Grien, Schmerzensmann [Man of Sorrows], 1511

In one of the more curious English etymological journeys from Greek (pathos), ‘passion’ now stands for ardent enthusiasm or, worse, lust. But in its oldest and most enduring sense, passion refers to suffering. It is a corporeal ordeal bound in an emotional expression of anguish. It is pain, of the body, of the heart.

I’d have made a hopeless utilitarian. There are plenty of them still kicking about, but I pity their plight. ‘All pain is bad, umkay?’ The sentiment has a hollow, modern ring suggestive of double-entry bookkeeping and facts in boxes. It seems inescapable to me that the human has always been defined in some way through or against pain and suffering. From pain we derive meaning, sense of purpose, sense of gain and loss, sense of identity. The significance of flesh and blood – our substance – is its tenuousness. We are morbid creatures. We tear and bleed. Around us and in us ‘nature’ struggles. Out of Victorian conceit we’ve been wont to talk of the survival of the fittest, beating our chests as if the civilised world somehow had a monopoly over the category ‘fit’. The flipside of that expression is the suffering of the majority, the struggle, through pain, to death.

This is not meant to be bleak. Through struggle we strive, and in striving we become. Pain moves us, physically, affectively. It holds up to us our limits and dares us to transcend them. Through adversity comes clarity of purpose. The worse the ordeal we come through, the more resolute we are. Just as there is no courage without fear, there is no purpose without pain. Think of all the people who claim they will ‘re-evaluate’ their lives after painful experiences. There is truth in cliché.

Ecce Homo: Behold the man. Through passion – in pain – significant. 

Perils of the Fad

This post gives me the pleasure of re-introducing my artist friend, Julian Peters, whose website is now full of his magical skills. Honestly, who knew that poetry and comic books could make such stylish bedfellows. I hasten you there, where you may happily lose an hour or two.

We’re all subject to fads; even the best of us. Although the more elegant of our number will point to a certain permanence of style, we nevertheless watch as cuts go in and out, longer and shorter, and as tie widths narrow and widen from one year to the next. Take time-lapse photography of the face of an adult male over ten years and you will see his sideburns dance up and down, with seasonal facial hair sprouting and disappearing whimsically. The mutton chop, however, is now dead (and wherever you see it, you can be sure it’s a fad). At least we can say that the mode du jour in these terms is only variations on a theme. Taking a broad view, things appear basically to stay the same.

Reproduced with permission. Julianpeterscomics.com

Click to enlarge.

Not so in the inelegant world. There’s a meaningless revolution every five minutes out there on the street, as vanity dolls everywhere do their best to be miniature poodle of the year. It really is as tasteless as Crufts. Someone should hand out rosettes for best in show. Particularly annoying this year is the craze among women to wear not-quite-thick-enough black tights sans skirt. This year I’ve seen more underwear, cellulite, bum sweat, and unmentionable bulges than any given single man with broadband. And all I’ve been doing is making my way on the pavement, trying in vain to mind my own business. Really, ‘ladies’, when did you decide that this was above board? If it’s merely a fad to presage the second-coming of the long dress and empire waist I might just about live with it. I fear however, that the next step will be even more revealing, and a further notch on the self-degrading scale.

The male fad that’s made me sigh most this year – and maybe it’s just a Berlin thing – is wearing glasses without lenses. That’s right, just frames. It helps if the frames are luminous pink, or green, but I’ve also seen rather swish tortoise-shell affairs astride the hipster nose. I don’t get it. Is being somewhat optically deficient in? Were my sight to diminish I should embrace the wearing of glasses wholeheartedly. Until it does, and I pray it won’t, I shall continue with nez au naturel.

Reproduced with permission. Julianpeterscomics.com

Click to enlarge

At times like this I wish I were an oak tree. As the years pass, I would barely notice these fools, and the world might seem like a consistent procession of the stylish.

The Writer's Work Week

Under the U-Bahn line the workmen are laying cobble stones. Berlin construction workers restore the old unevenness after having dug it up. The conveniences of cables and optical fibres are buried in charm. No tarmac and steam rollers here, but a wheelbarrow full of rocks and a team of men with hammers. These men of 2011 could be men of 1921 or 1871 were it not for their modern interpretation of work wear.

The view is from a café on the corner of Schönhauser Allee and Danziger Strasse, overlooking the historic site of Konnopke’s Imbiss where, since Weimar days, this street-food shack has purveyed currywurst, day and night, to Prenzlauer Berg patrons. It has survived wars, hot and Cold, and managed to function behind the Iron Curtain. Now it’s being renovated, the stones under it being replaced, that it might serve sausage another century.

The U-Bahn arches over the street in freshly painted green wrought iron, riveted but trembling under the weight of the yellow trains. It’s an essential industrial relic: a monument to muscle work for which we no longer have a taste, but upon which we rely everyday. Thousands ascend the limestone staircase to the platform daily, for the train is the artery that transports worker blood to the capital heart. At 6 a.m. the workforce is in overalls; at 8 a.m. it is in suits. They rattle off that the city may function, and underneath the men with hammers, on their knees, knock in stone after stone.

In the café, students are being industrious in their way, learning languages in tandem, reading papers and writing essays. Some sit in a studied picture of thought, which is to daydream in an intellectual posture. The baristas pull shots of espresso and plate croissants and watch life go by, wishing they were going by too. The industry here is decadent and delicious. Plate glass separates this world from the clickety-clack and blue collars of the street. As if lured to giant plasma screens the intellects look up at the riveting scene of industry and the pathways to work. Disengaged, they resume their posturing. They live in a world of screens and windows – of televisions and computers, telephones and tablets – and the café is just another way passively to pretend that their lives are active and engaged.

Amidst all this the writer observes, wondering about his place. It is Monday, but it doesn’t much matter. The writer has done his fair share of manual labour. He has also ridden the train in a suit, heading somewhere for somebody else. He has been a student, and studied the affectations of their kind. He has done the intellectual labour that they haven’t yet reached, and may not ever, and found in it a detachment – an unbridgeable distance from the day-to-day – that he tries to recapture through observation. He fails for himself, but finds meaning in the others. Writing what he sees, he orders more coffee.

A Three-Pipe Problem

      ‘What are you going to do, then?’ I asked.

      ‘To smoke,’ he answered. ‘It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg that you won’t speak to me for fifty minutes.’ He curled himself up in his chair, with his think knees drawn up to his hawk-like nose, and there he sat with his eyes closed and his black clay pipe thrusting out like the bill of some strange bird. I had come to the conclusion that he had dropped asleep, and indeed was nodding myself, when he suddenly sprang out of his chair with the gesture of a man who has made up his mind, and put his pipe down upon the mantel-piece. (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Red-Headed League, 1891).

Mr. Nestor pressed his thumb down on a half-filled pipe, closed his eyes, and thought. Over a long life he had come to recognise the difference between a connoisseur, an addict, and a buffoon. People who smoked common-or-garden cigarettes – foul things – merited none of his attention. They were slaves to nasty tobacco, and he could not laud the wilfully enslaved, however wonderful their character in between puffs. Men who smoked cigars for the look of the thing on special occasions, with no mind to what a cigar was beyond its use as an ever-decreasing phallic symbol, also did not command his attention. They compensated for lack of depth by conspicuous display. It was not for him. The cigar aficionado – not merely the purchaser of the eponymous magazine – was a different matter altogether. He saw the art in the thing, and went about his business as might an expert of wine, or of porcelain. So long as he was not obsessed by the passion that burnt within him, Mr. Nestor was interested to talk to him (knowing, of course, that there was usually fire where there was smoke).

For Nestor, all of these characters faded into the mist when put next to the man of the pipe. The pipe smoker was one of three things: deeply cerebral and intelligent, worldly wise, or a fool. (Nestor disregarded the fourth pipe smoker: the affected man. Any pipe smoker who did not fit his three categories was a charlatan and a disgrace. To smoke a pipe as an affectation was to ape virtue; and virtue, Nestor thought, could not be found in any ape.) He thought back over many decades to his early childhood, sitting on the bony knee of his grandfather, who prepared his pipe with meticulous ease. The sweet blue smoke enveloped them like a shawl, and the child craned his neck to hear what lessons in life might rise up on the plumes of smoke, to be inhaled and passively absorbed. Here was learning, straight from the wisdom of lived years.

Nestor then considered the learning of books and of civilisation, and the teachers thereof. The pipe, for dons and politicians, connected a circuitry of thinking and doing; breathing, cogitating and gesticulating. The pipe, brought to the lips, signified cerebration. As it was withdrawn and directed towards listeners, it presaged words of direction, of decision, and of authority. A man who tells you what to do by allowing his words to follow the length of an arm and rise up out of a pipe is a man whom you obey, thought Nestor. Here was presence. Here was charisma. Here was the embodiment of all that was wise.

And then Nestor remembered the man he knew who liked to smoke his pipe when playing golf. When playing a shot, the man placed his pipe in a trouser pocket. It still surprised Nestor that the man had only once set his trousers alight. If you asked that man about the incident, he would deny it. The scars were an old war wound, he’d claim. But you know what they say: ‘Liar, liar…’

Nestor pinched these reflections into a single confusion of tobacco, pressed it into his pipe, and smoked it.

Being Manly and the Question of Substance

One must draw a line between mere affect and substance; between appearance and character; between form and content; between words and deeds. As I circle the internet, buzzard-like, I notice many of the former categories in this list masquerading as the latter categories. For some reason many people seem to confuse what is essentially empty for that which is substantially meaningful. All kinds of assumed contiguities are employed so that, for example, clothes can stand in for the man. We all know the axiom ‘the clothes don’t make the man’, but the axiom exists only because it is so widely and indiscriminately ignored. In much the same way, most people judge books by their covers. It has been the principle of bookselling since Gutenberg.

Judge thee not

I’m troubled by this, just as you would expect. When we strive to be the best we can be, are we really content with reducing our betterment to cosmetics? If you were to search the great ethereal sea for what people have to say about being manly, for example, you will find all manner of ill-considered talk of flatulence and fire, power tools and automobiles, firearms and fisticuffs, and generally the treatment of women as sexual objects. The more discerning empty rhetoric you’ll find will talk about manners and pocket squares, but only a very few make any attempt to draw a line between show and substance. In both extremes you learn only how little men know about what is really important: a man’s virtues.

Does he have courage, or know how to define it? Does he understand that which he fears and has he faced it? Does he know when to rush in, and when to hold hard? Can he balance the problems around him and see his way through with wisdom? Is he temperate, hard-working, resilient and just? Does he understand his place, in his family, his nation, his world, and can he execute his role as a worthy citizen? He must understand these things, not as words but from within, if he is to be these things. And for this there are no short cuts; no sound-bite routes to glory; no quick fixes. I may talk of form, of affect, of appearance, and of words; but I want to arrive at content, at substance, at character, and at deeds. Sometimes, the surfaces serve as entry points to, or as analogues for, the depths; we must remember that it is for this reason, and for this reason alone, that we concern ourselves with the surface at all.

Being manly, or indeed womanly, is not something that can be achieved through the mere push of a button. It’s hard, but worthy, work.

Bling! Or, Put It Away, Sir

Now then. As it ‘appens.

The image of sad-old-man friendliness when I was a child was Jimmy Savile. Anyone outside of Britain will not know who this is/was. He is/was a kindly fellow – once upon a time he was a Radio Luxembourg DJ, and the first ever presenter of Top of the Pops, if he needed any cred – who had a show in which he ‘fixed it’ for children to have their hearts’ desires. I wouldn’t usually think of the ‘80s as an age of innocence. But then there was Jimmy. Sir James, as he later became, was very fond of his mum – lived with her always so far as I know – and when she died he kept her room just as she had left it. It was a shrine, and Jimmy will go to his grave a mummy’s boy, in the nicest possible way. He is a good lad, now pushing 85 I should think; always a fit man – ran dozens of marathons – but a perennial cigar smoker; and a huge benefactor of noble causes and charities. The English tend to think of him as a national institution; a classic English eccentric. He wears a lot of jewellery, for which he is famous. He looks like this:

He used to look like this:

Sportswear and jewellery remain his most recognisable motifs, save for a few choice phrases. He kind of reminds me of this:

Which is to say, that unless you’re a kind-hearted English eccentric, beloved by old and young alike, and honoured by the Queen, you look like a bit of an idiot in jewellery and sportswear. But you know that. The point I’m leading to is rather more positive. What jewellery can you wear if you happen not to be said national institution, or an idiot? Why this, for example:

Gold and mother-of-pearl cufflinks. Edwardian I think. Picked up by my wife at what I call a ‘rifle shop’ (so named because you have to rifle through a lot of junk to find the good stuff, which is always there if you’re patient). My brother has the matching pair, which I gave to him on the occasion of him being my Best Man.

Keep it clean, simple and honest and you cannot go wrong.

How’s about that then?

Crying Game: A Vignette

‘The winter is hard in England’, thought McDuff, as he looked in on his players warming up before the big match. There wasn’t a great deal of stretching, or indeed any physical activity of any kind, but gloves and scarves (or snoods, so he’d heard) were being donned uniformly. He thought back on his youth in Aberdeen and reflected that the dark months must have been much warmer then.

Each player scrupulously adjusted himself in his personal mirror, making sure that the Nike logo on his snood faced the front, and that his earrings weren’t obscured by the deliciously synthetic fabric. Wantona Bandon, the £15m striker from Ivory Coast, turned to his Brazilian teammate, Preeno, and asked if he thought his eyebrows were evenly groomed. ‘These tweezers will never do’, he said, waving the twenty-four carat diamond encrusted implement in the Brazilian’s face. Preeno grunted – a masculine show of irreverence – and continued to fuss over his tights, which he’d laddered in the processing of putting on. He cursed his fingernails to the room at large, and made a mental note to fire his manicurist after the game.

McDuff called order in the room. The players sat down on cushioned benches, while the young and willing youth squad silently attended to the laces of the stars’ personalised pink football boots. The only sound was the oily slurping of hair gel as it was liberally applied to the players’ heads by the team coach, Sean Itall, a Yorkshire man who no longer understood his life. As McDuff glared at his players he reflected that he didn’t shout as much as he used to do. A sharp glance seemed to bring tears to their eyes and, for all his accomplishments, he knew not how to handle snivelling.

‘This will be a hard game’, he said. The European Champions had drawn non-league side Bighoof United in the cup – a pub side from Barnsley – and McDuff wasn’t sure that his players understood the task at hand. ‘They know only how to kick, punch, and tackle’, he went on, ‘and they won’t much care if you’ve got the ball or not. They’re impervious to cold – they don’t even wear shirts when they’re out on the town – and they will mince you and make you into pies if they sense weakness.’

Anxious looks ensued. A rustle of paper from just outside the door alerted McDuff to the presence of the players’ agents, who were flicking through their clients’ contracts to see if there was any way that they could be weaselled out of the game. They need not have worried. An epidemiological singularity occurred at that moment, as each of the star players was suddenly struck with an acute virus, the symptoms of which included hyperventilation, vomiting and syncope. Like so many Victorian ladies, their constitutions failed them at the eleventh hour. One after the other they expressed their wish to lie – to lie down.

McDuff had seen it before. He clicked his fingers at the bewildered youth squad. ‘Boots on lads,’ he said. ‘You’re going on’.

Daring to Speak Its Name

It is beautiful, it is fine, it is the noblest form of affection. There is nothing unnatural about it. It is intellectual, and it repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour of life before him. That it should be so the world does not understand (Oscar Wilde).

The world did not, and does not, understand. How curious that the man identified with bringing homosexuality into the public sphere in modern times had a specific intellectual agenda to broadcast with respect to love. The public attempts to reduce the man’s reputation to the level of the gutter were met with references to poetry, philosophy and spirituality - to eros. And to where, might we ask, has this intellectual quotient disappeared?

I begin this entry knowing that I will displease some, but I have repeatedly been asked to write upon it, and can shirk the responsibility no longer. I wish, at the very least, to get one thing straight: men have always sought sexual intimacy with other men, but only very recently has this had anything at all to do with identity. Nothing within the pages of Being Manly is exclusionary, precisely because I believe that being manly is within the purview of any man, regardless of his physical persuasions, if he gives the matter due attention.

People have become very confused in recent years about what homosexuality means. Literally, it defines a sexual preference and nothing more. Unfortunately, a great burden has been placed upon men who desire other men to conform to a cultural standard, which sweeps up their sexuality with a gender identity, namely being ‘gay’ or ‘queer’. I have seen this happen: the public emergence as homosexual seems to entail a wholesale transformation of lifestyle, manners, morals and speech (especially intonation). I confess to being bewildered by this.

There are, within this culture, realities that sit at odds with what I tentatively call common decency. Please don’t mistake this sentence as prudish, bigoted or hypocritical. To my mind, it is just as lax and impolite for a heterosexual person to behave with wanton abandon, marking notches on the bedpost and publicly announcing, even flaunting, his promiscuity. I refuse to associate with straight men like this for they show a complete disregard for those who place discretion as a cornerstone of propriety. Unfortunately, just as in the case of the justly maligned macho man, many gay men feel an expectation to behave in this way – it is something of a cultural standard – and it does a great discredit to the many men who are sober, faithful partners (or who at least would appreciate fidelity), and who believe in the qualitative value of relationships, the bonds of love, and all the signs of an upstanding man in modern society. Discretion is the better part of valour. All men would do well to remember this, regardless of with whom they care to sleep.

Therefore, let us talk of love, come one, come all; but let us talk no more of unclothed activities, for they are and should be matters of the private life.

A Short Step to Eccentricity

Dressing well is not a straightforward matter. Even for those in the know, the difference between classic elegance and ridiculousness is slight, the pitfalls awaiting missteps great. Everyone will tell you to be an individual, to mix things up, to not be too studied, or too ‘put together’. Acquire an air of relaxed formality, they will say. Yet one is to know one’s palette, and work within it. And of course, the basic rules must be observed. All well and good. But to a man without a friend in the know this can be bewildering. Just as watching Tiger Woods videos won’t improve your swing, watching the world of fashion will not usher you into it. The basics – fit, cut, cloth, colour – are not obvious. The ambitious but misguided may feel like they are really cutting it, when in fact they have made themselves into mere caricatures. This is the basis of all those magazine ‘experts’ and TV media hacks who make their living pointing out where the celebs went sartorially wrong. Perhaps the rich and famously stupid can get away with it. The man on the street may not fare so well.

My case in point, so as not to embarrass anybody, is Mr. Charles James Mathews, 1803-78. As an English comic actor, his public appearance may not be thought to have been in earnest. It was all ‘just so’, and yet all ‘off’. I imagine it took quite some considerable skill on the part of Mr. Mathews to achieve such a studiously eccentric and nonsensical appearance, without obviously transgressing any rules of formal wear. A couple of details ground the look: the umbrella is charming, the moustache in keeping with the times, the shoes all too ordinary. The rest, while retaining a clear sense of the English gentleman, does enough to make one question his sanity. His posture accentuates the stomach and narrows the shoulders (too many men stand like this without realising it). His trousers are on the long side, breaking at the knee, the shin, and above the shoe, and giving the impression of limpness. So, no backbone, and no strength. A fop, to be sure. The jailbird reference in the trousers is a screaming faux pas and the jacket, with big metal buttons and plaid lining, invokes a cross between a policeman and a bookie. The hat is as like to produce a rabbit as to be doffed at the ladies. In short, this is a man at whom one would laugh, unless he tried to sell you anything, in which case you would run away. The laughter, from Mr. Mathews' point of view, was sought. Unless you seek it too, be mindful.

New York Inspirations: Convention Centre

Strolling briskly around mid-town Manhattan, one cannot escape the style-savvy well-cut thirty-somethings who populate the place. More than any other city, perhaps, in New York there is no compunction about fine tailoring, and no reticence about showing it off. Yet, strange to report, it is by-and-large pretty conventional; where it isn’t, it stands out.

Standing out, as The Sartorialist is wont to show us, ought to be a good thing. A man who knows who he is ought to be applauded for following his heart. But I must admit I received mixed reactions from the conventionally clad over a moderately daring pair of plaid trousers. My nether man was perfectly attired in the well-fitting, English-designed, Italian-stitched, product of Scottish sheep. Never did such a sheep turn so many heads! Looks of admiration were welcome; looks of confused bewilderment were confusedly bewildering; exclamations of ‘oh boy, oh boy’, replete with shaking heads and expressions implying moral transgression, were rather vulgar. A woman rudely exhorted me to stop as I helplessly ascended an escalator in Bloomingdale’s, in order to ask me where in the world I bought such ‘pants’. In the same store, a member of staff eyed me up and down, particularly down, and commended me on my ‘very nice plaid’. Workmen in sweatshirts and jeans (blue collar is an outmoded image), smoking cigarettes, called after my lithe legs, partly to ridicule, partly as masculine recognition. In short, my lower half has never received so much attention… in public.

I had not intended to shock. I had not sought the limelight – God knows, Broadway has enough people clamouring for that – or any semblance of notoriety. I merely wore what I thought were rather spectacular trousers. It seems that I am not the only one to have an eye for the spectacular, but the jury is still out on whether I am the only one to have a taste for it. What I take away from the experience is a deeper knowledge of what constitutes acceptable behaviour on the part of strangers as they encounter me in that haphazard manner wrought by urban living. It is rude to stare. It is more rude to stop and stare. It is more rude still to stop, stare, point and gawp. And it is rudest of all to stop, stare, point, gawp and declaim aloud the ill-made decisions of others. A man should have enough about him to be able to take what he sees in his stride; quietly to acknowledge good taste where he sees it, if it is appropriate so to do; and discreetly to go about his business without comment or any outward sign of recognition where he disapproves. Nobody was hurt by this particular pair of trousers. Some even found pleasure in them. But whatever one’s inner reaction, there is no real need to risk offending the sartorially splendid stranger, or the victim of fashion, by sharing those feelings in crass and conspicuous ways.

French Kissing

Growing up in working-class England, a cuff was typically best known metonymically in the context of adult hand brusquely encountering the auricular appendage of impertinent child. As a consideration of style, an integral part of the male shirt, it was barely given a thought.

In other echelons, confusion reigned. Barrel cuffs and link cuffs, single and French, each with prescriptions concerning what clothes went with which. Thankfully, rules have relaxed. Working-class kids, their ears intact, might receive a decent education; the cuff link has become everyday wear, at least for some.

I rarely see single linked cuffs. The French variety, fastened in the ‘kissing’ style (inside pressed to inside), are more common, although still a minoritarian preference compared with the boring old button. Disturbingly, many of the cuff links I see on the nouveau riche wrist are truly awful, tasteless, and cheap. The cuff link is an elegant but ultimately functional fastening (pictured: solid silver squares on a Ben Sherman cuff). It ought not to be ostentatious. Male adornments are risky things and, without proper care, jewellery can make a man look vulgar and crass. Nothing conveys a baseness of character so well as ‘bling’. All that glisters, etc. To avoid such unwholesome projections, keep one’s French kissing discreet.

Affecting Friendship

There is an art to manliness which is affect. I don’t really have a problem with the cultivation of affectations so long as they are thoroughgoing. After a time, the recently acquired affectation becomes a way of being, and adds to the depth of one’s character. Forms come with meanings, and should be thought about along meaningful lines. Smoking a pipe for the mere image of it, for example, would be no good. There are rituals, commitments, and artisanal considerations to weigh before display can properly be carried out. Such things being observed, the image of it conveys a seriousness of character and thoughtfulness that merely smoking would not. Not that I should go out of my way to promote smoking, heaven forefend, but if that’s your cup of tea, may you observe the appropriate ceremony.

On the topic of affectations that belie meanings, one of the most prevalent, and least edifying, is the tendency of Western males to pretend to stoicism, if not mechanism, in their personal relations with other men. Many of us are fortunate to count among our number one, two, or more genuine male friends. These men, with whom we would entrust our fortunes in love and money, are our dearest companions beyond spousal considerations of whatever persuasion. Yet how often do we tell them? How often do we emote, not theatrically, but sincerely, in their direction? What do we fear would be the result? The truth is that many men fight shy of their own feelings, and presume the same of others. In a vicious circle of machismo – the least manly quality, by the way – we bid to outdo one another in the hardness of our countenances, while consuming ever more alcohol and spiralling downwards into the much vaunted, but overrated, ‘cave’ of primal masculinity. Robert Bly and his ilk are welcome to abscond to their dark, dank, dismal corners and grunt together, but I see no reason to turn my back on the light. Male bonding might be found in ritual violence, but I somehow think there is a sweeter, lighter way. Just for once, be honest with yourself and tell your best mate what you think of him.

You don’t have to tell him you love him if that freaks you out. But my guess is that whatever you say, if it’s heartfelt, won’t be ungraciously received. It would be a hard man indeed who would not soften in the face of true feeling. Beat down the least helpful, least thoughtful of your affectations – the need to seem tough – and be true to the nature of the friendships you value. Who knows, you might start to affect emotion more often and, if you give it due consideration, it might lead you to an altogether better place.