The New York Times Magazine, Sunday, August 22, 1999

The Outsiders
"How about some of these worms?" he asks, holding a baggie of bait. "Fishing is
like alcoholism. It's an excuse to drink. Or maybe they're trying to level the
playing field. How hard can it be to outsmart a fish?"
"Catching it is kinda fun --" Myles tries.
"Now ice fishing -- alcoholism in the extreme," George continues. "Cold, boring,
worry about falling through the ice. Hey, my girlfriend dumped me. She dumped
my slacker [expletive]."
"I thought you were gonna give her the --" Myles tries.
"Yeah, but she surprised me."
"Irony of ironies. So, technically, you're the loser."
"Shut up," George says, sounding sad.
Toffer survived
the solitary years
by not showing
emotion. 'I didn't
like myself
because I didn't
have anything,'
he says flatly.
'No athletics, no
grades. The only
thing that kept
me going was
that I hated them
more than I
hated myself.'
"To the winner goes all the spoils of war," Myles
appeals.
"Shut up," George says, relocating to the sun room.
He lifts Fido, Myles's lizard.
"Watch out, George," Myles says protectively.
George presses Fido into the aquarium to make the
wood chips fly.
"That's cruel, stop it," Myles says, retrieving his
lizard, as George moves on to his lectern, the
Stairmaster.
"That cat is wishing for a tail," George says,
observing Myles's tailless cat.
"To the victor goes the spoils of war," Myles sighs,
mock ruefully.
"Stop defending your tailless cat," says George.
"Anyways, so Colleen broke up with me."
"You already told me that," Myles says. He glances
at his buddy. "I thought that's what you wanted."
"I did," George says, sounding far from sure. Now that he has been rendered
single, what will come of the flirtation he lost his girlfriend for?
The new girl, a computer skateboarder chick, likes to spar. George says, "We're
both the same person, but it's hard when you have two sarcastic people making
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