ABSTRACT

The previous chapter stopped rather abruptly, I’m afraid, with some loose ends left over. It had started out promisingly enough, with the heartwarming question about how to have loving and trusting friendships, but somehow we got bollixed up on different questions entirely: How do you save your ass? How do you survive on the vertical scale of manhood? How high is your “station”? How do you not get trounced out of it? How do you muster the practical courage not to trounce someone else? How do you disengage your brain from the dynamics that are keeping you stuck on the manhood cliff long enough to imagine what a trusting and loving friendship even is?