Boys make grand, crazy plans and dream them right through to the end and just don’t seem to know that some things can’t be done. Boys bring stuff home to show mom. Boys like to play with their wieners. Boys wonder what all the fuss is about. Boys wonder. Boys do ridiculous things sometimes. Boys get hurt. Boys can be solemn.
I’m not talking Tom Dean as Peter Pan—which is the awful thing that happens when you don’t grow up—not when Tom Dean is fifty-one years old, and is married, and has three children (not to mention two others, Sofia and Antonin, now adults, from some vague and ancient liaisons), and a house, and a car, and a dog, and a cat, and is going to Venice to show the whole wide world what’s being called “The Whole Catastrophe,” which means the whole wide world is getting a bunch of bronze dogs and a lot of bronze wieners and some babies and some babes and, as they say in the magazine ads, much, much more.
Tom Dean says, “A lot of what I do embarrasses me and I have to overcome that, that sense that it’s too far-fetched, of how can I do that or say that.”
Boys wonder.
So begins our Summer 1999 cover story. To keep reading, view a PDF of the entire article.
