I believe it is a small miracle – maybe a big miracle – whenever men make friends with other men. Men do not have a movement, a political or cultural identity, the gift of mentoring one another, of loving one another. Men have been pushed to the margins of our culture in so many ways, overpowered and shown up by the creativity, affection, community and energy of women. It is not one thing or the other, but it is a striking thing.

If you look at politics or the world, you see that war, crime, brutality, genocide, economic havoc, domination are overwhelmingly male activities. More than 90 per dent of the people in jail are male, as are almost all of those arrested for murder, rape and robbery. Congress is a wrenching and almost daily display of the problems men have resolving differences, finding accommodation, seeking compromise. I don’t mean to romanticize women. Women are capable of great brutality, especially when they emulate male models of business or conflict or politics, rather than creating their own.

But men are having a major identity crisis and I feel for them, as they are too busy butting into one another to pay much attention to it, or to really change their often unfulfilled and harried lives. I have spent many years looking for male friends, and have made one or two. Men do not value friendship or often make room for it. I am learning to do that. I made a friend today, at a lunch. A smart and creative man, a writer and painter, a man like me who has set out on his own to make a living at a creative live and lives out in the country. We talked for two hours. I think it is a small miracle anytime contacts between men are about friendship and connection.