“I never killed anybody,” he whispers. “But I could. I’m sure I could.” Rumble, Young Man, Rumbleopens in a sporting goods store, owned and operated by the members of an amateur paintball team. Logan Bryant, its self-professed star--as politically incorrect as he is knowledgeable about athletic equipment and barbecue grills--guides us through this world of barbells, guns and protein supplements. And by the end of “Balls, Balls, Balls,” we see that it is his insecurity and doubt, not his brawn and confidence, that have shaped him into the sort of man he is. “Real emotion makes people nervous. . . . Passion is too Mussolini.” "The Art of the Possible” puts us into the mind of an up-and-coming congressman making a bid for a second term. As we follow him from one photo op to another, we see firsthand what he must sacrifice of himself to please the many--from sleep to kindness to integrity. And in a final, heart-wrenching scene, the snapshots line up to reveal a particular truth--that these sacrifices are not borne by him alone. “All you need to learn is that you can hit him and he can hit you and that it might hurt but you’re not going to kill each other.” “Except sometimes,” she said. I nodded again. “Except sometimes.” In “The Ropes,” Alexander Folsom spends a summer with his father on Martha’s Vineyard, getting his strength back after his last boxing match, in which he fared the worse. Trying to work, trying to play, trying to flirt with the soon-to-be-married daughter of a well-to-do family on the Vineyard, Alex finds himself floundering in most every way as he attempts to reconcile the ends of both his athletic and his college careers—and to find a new, more personal form of discipline. Throughout his debut collection of nine powerful stories, Benjamin Cavell shows us the darker side of being a “real” man. Along with the machismo, the self-assuredness and power comes a heightened sense of fear and mortality, and ultimately a deeper search for comfort, for someone or something to rely upon. Funny and smart, urgent, fearless and emotionally rich, these are stories without an ounce of fat on them. Though his literary forebears may be Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer, Benjamin Cavell speaks in a voice entirely his own.