I have proven myself to be the pussy that I am by writing this piece. Ernest lived a very macho life and wrote some very macho stories. But Ernest threw it all away by blowing his head off with a shotgun. Real men do not commit suicide. Real men know just how much life sucks.
Real men grit their teeth and take it bill after bill, war after war, tumor after tumor.
You don't greet Death, you punch him in the throat repeatedly as he drags you away. Macho is a very slippery thing. You don't read about it, you don't write about it, you don't even know the correct spelling of the word. Being macho implies a tough, hard, blocklike approach full of pistons and rods and axles and other big steel-type stuff. It's hard to live by the old macho code these days.