Here’s a little teaser for an essay from the next issue – a piece about a dream writer Nickolas Butler had about Mr. Brett Favre ...

•     By all rights, I still ought to hate Brett Favre. I live in Wisconsin in a blue-collar cheesehead neighborhood where people still wince at the mention of his name. I even once worshipped the man in that uncomfortable way adult males idealize other adult male athletes. And, a few weeks ago, Favre torched my Packers and looked like the Favre of old, a betrayal of epic proportions. But something odd happened a few nights ago that cleansed me of my ephemeral hatred of the man.
•     Dreams are an easy conceit for writers, but I must confess that this dream is authentic, no doubt a product of afternoons of NFL football on the television and years of commercials layered over my psyche like paint. I had fallen into a deep sleep and at some point, late in the evening, I began dreaming. The dream was cinematically vivid. In my dream, I was in a Wranglers commercial with Brett Favre. That Wranglers commercial. Surrounded by the guys I once played high school football with, we populated a moist, verdant football field somewhere in northern Wisconsin. Our coach was even there, pot-bellied and hoarse of voice. And I was the star of this Wranglers commercial. The soundtrack was loud Credence Clearwater Revival, and on the field, all of us laughed and grab-assed in a carefree way, but no two men more intimately or happily than Brett and I. He even leaned on me and talked trash into my ear. At one point, he might have lifted me off the earth, a la Donald Driver, my legs kicking fruitlessly in the autumn air.
•     I am aware that here the dream takes on a benign but decidedly PG “Brokeback” quality ...

Read the rest in the Jan. 14 issue.