You should read this 2005 short story by Charles D'Ambrosio called "Up North." The New Yorker tweeted it last week—apropos of Thanksgiving—and over the weekend I reread it for the third or fourth time, and I'm looking forward to my fifth, sixth, and seventh. Every time you read it it gets better. It is not just a story where things happen to lifelike characters; it is a beautifully made aesthetic object full of lines that may seem unnecessary on first reading but roar with extra meaning when you know what's coming. Like a lot of D'Ambrosio's stories, it's a window into how hetero men navigate their role in the social order, in this case within the context of family, intimacy, and other men. And every single thing the narrator tries to do to be a good man—the wide-open way he loves and protects his wife, his generosity in assenting to the will of others, his gentleness, his fundamental decency—backfires.