Then the meanderings, the wandering to college, and the fractious mess that had come before finally blew apart. There were Nice Girls and Romance, but little knowledge and less intelligence. There was a lot of fuss at the time about manhood, and I was chewed up in it, even to the point of writing a letter to Robert Bly - there were women who ran with the wolves, and I felt emasculated by them, all that sexual pressure building up, the sense of constant guilt and awfulness about every token desire. My Manhood, 1994 was a child's vision of what it takes to be a man, but I was looking for some model, some picture.

At about 21 I began to crave normalcy, and quiet, and sanity.