Chapter 2: Focusing on Friends by Steve Tesich

While most of the body paragraphs of this essay focused on his friendships with males, Tesich spends a lot of time talking about female friends at the beginning of this essay and then returns to this topic at the end. I believe Tesich chose to structure his essay this way, because his female friends didn't really have a huge impact in his life, but still important to him. For example, Tesich says, "they're looking right at me, these women in these extreme close-ups; the lighting is exquisite, worthy of a Fellini or Fosse film." In this part of the essay, he talks about how clear and vivid his thoughts were about his female friends, but not with his male friends. In the body paragraphs, Tesich describes his memories with 3 of his best male friends and how he couldn't explain to them in words how he felt so he did with his actions, whereas for the women he could just tell them in 3 simple words. Also, he never went into depth about his female friends like exposing their names or experiences he had with them. He showed that it was easy to express his emotions to his female friends and being an important part of his life, but they had a different value than his real male friends. So, I believe he chose to end this way, because he had to find a way to prove to his male friends that he loved them too just like he does with his female friends.