Free Of Snakes Sex Playing in the Rain, Random Thou by Clay Reynolds Page A

exercise without the bothersome company of men. The difference, of course, is that even though many of them use carts, women usually mean these things when they say them.
    Mixed-gender golf groups retard and inhibit these appeals, of course, as do days when players stack up on top of one another, crowding the distances between foursomes and demanding at least a semblance of decorum if not decency. But generally, my observation has been that twosomes, threesomes, and foursomes tend to be gender-specific. Men play with men. Women play with women. In case there is any doubt that the golf gods don’t want to keep it that way, note the significant distances between men’s and women’s tees. That’s not because women are physically smaller and need the advantage; I think it’s because it’s annoying to play with people who tee off from different locations, so it discourages mixed groups.
    Thus the recent surge of interest in golf may truly be more of a response to some deeper phenomenon in the American psyche than any desire to be a sportsman or gamester. Most golfers will confess that they don’t play very well. More will confess that they truly “hate the game” and they only vaguely understand why they come out and spend all kinds of money on it.
    But they also know that buried beneath the practical reasons for doing something else—like trimming the hedge, rotating the tires, cleaning out the garage, or taking the kids to Chucky Cheese—there is the irresistible call of the masculine wild, the attraction of being in the society of individuals who understand one another and are sympathetic to the need for honest expression and uninhibited juvenile behavior, the unmatched and primeval fundamental good feeling and incredible adrenaline rush that comes from hitting a truly good shot and being able to say, “Man! I knocked the piss outta that one!” and not having to look around and see who might be listening.
    So I suspect that golf will be around for a while longer and will continue to grow in popularity. I was told recently that over 11,000,000 Americans go out to the links at least twice a month to lose balls and humiliate themselves. The average handicap among amateurs is somewhere between twenty-five and thirty, and the average expenditure on the game runs close to fifteen hundred dollars a year. That may be a small price to pay for a few hours of freedom from reality and an opportunity to renew one’s conviction that there are just some things in life that can never be mastered but offer other incentives that are alluring and always tempting to sample. And besides, there’s always the possibility that a new oversized platinum-coated, feather-weight driver with the skid-proof grip, latex-coated super-flex shaft, and gyro-balanced, stainless steel-faced head will finally provide an extra twenty yards right down the middle. And if it doesn’t, well there’s cold beer in the clubhouse and always some girls to ogle.

THE PROFITS OF PROSE
    “Fiction is a lie, with which we tell the truth.”
    — Robert Flynn

    I’m a writer. In something more than a manner of speaking, I suppose I’ve always been a writer. I didn’t realize that for a long time. Indeed, what angers me most when I consider the point is that I was nearly four decades into my life before I could accept the fact of what I was. I seem to have wasted a lot of time. I spent almost half my life working toward being a scholar. My scholarship is still important to me, but it took a while for me to realize that what thrilled me about publishing research and criticism was less the content of what I had to say than the thrill of having people read my words and comment on the way I said it. Then I managed to publish some fiction; and although my success, such as it has been, is modest by any standard, I found myself at middle age and beginning a second career without having satisfactorily completed the first one.
    I feel the pressure of time on me always. My