Is there anything worse for a man than to be called sweet?

A man doesn't want to be known as sweet. A man takes sweetness as a reproach. The word is bitter on a man's tongue. Sweetness doesn't win pennants. Sweetness doesn't discover new worlds, break the sound barrier, or close the deal. Sweetness gets men killed in war.

John Wayne was not sweet. Ernest Hemingway was not sweet. Don Draper is certainly not sweet. Aren't these the kinds of men women want? Isn't the strong and silent type desirable once again? My father is not sweet, but in him I've always considered this a defect, an accident of excess aloofness rather than a positive characteristic, the consequence of a strong willed masculinity.

Sweet is the ideal of bourgeois domesticity. Sweet mows the lawn but does not chop wood. Sweet makes love, but never, ever fucks.

Sweet is, above all, appropriate. I want to be appropriate, I want to fit in, but I also want to stand out. I want affairs, fucking free of sentimentality, but I want a lover even more. This is the conflict that I can't seem to resolve.