Last week, my wife, Sally, and I dropped the kids at a friend's house and headed to Shelter Island for a night at the Pridwin Hotel and Cottages. (I recommend it.) We had cocktails before dinner at the hotel bar. I ordered a vodka martini; Sally, a margarita. Then she excused herself to use the bathroom. As the bartender was preparing the drinks, he looked at me and said, “Straw?” Before I could answer, he said to me, emphatically, “Not for you , for your wife.” The intent of his statement seemed obvious. I had ordered a martini, and only someone without use of their hands would consider sipping it from a straw. But it was in the way he said it, “Not for you .” Consciously or not, the bartender had tapped into the deep and complicated relationship men have with straws.

The humble stra

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