“My marriage came to an end, with consequences that were almost beyond my powers of anticipation. One such consequence was that a series of men confided in me about their marriages past or present. These weren’t my old buddies—my old buddies suddenly viewed me with a kind of fear. These were guys with whom I’d had friendly but arm’s-length dealings: a father at my kids’ school; the contractor who was painting my new place; or, to take an astounding case, my dermatologist…. Either these men had heard about my new situation or something about me, some post-apocalyptic air, had led them to sniff it out.”
—“The First World,” Joseph O’Neill
Agreed, but only partially.
