"Nothing recedes like success."

That's a quote from Walter Winchell, the original gossip columnist. It's relevant to Tiger Wood's adultery-saga. Life runs through--because it emerges from--women. Men are acutely--even though mostly intuitively--aware that they therefore make a merely momentary contribution to the course of life. That moment defines a man's place in the biological process which ends, for each of us, in death. In other words, sex is more significant to a man's existence. Sex both guarantees human continuity and reveals the end. It's like a contest. Each time you play, you face losing. Every win recedes immediately into the past and you're faced the next time with the same prospect: you have everything to lose. Every man recognizes that everything is at stake for him in the moment. Only a few men have the nerve to confront this moment constantly. Most of us hedge the existential threat by locating ourselves in institutions--academies, corporations, families--which foster the illusion that our efforts abide and that therefore our lives will continue. The athlete--like the politician--is prepared to stake everything on the effort of the moment. It's a kind of heroism. That's why we like to watch it. And that's also why moments--like the expression of desire and arousal--can seem more important than all the institutional obligations and duties which you have accumulated in the vague social world. I say "vague" because, after all, it will disappear more or less instantaneously with my death. I saw an old video-clip recently from an interview with one of the women Woods was fucking. She is the widow of a man who was killed in one of the Towers on 9/11. In the interview she said, "I didn't kiss him goodbye, because I'd just put on my lipstick."...