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THE first thing Tiger Woods needs to do if he wants to remake himself is dump all the enablers. By that, I don't just mean the jerk caddie. I mean the so-called mentors who taught him how to play rent-a-hostess in Vegas. I mean the fawners who laughed at his crude jokes, and looked the other way when he was rude, or penurious. I mean all of the apologists, even the well-meaning ones, who conspired to create such a towering phony.There are a lot of questions surrounding Woods at the moment, from how many women to how long his indefinite leave from golf will last, but most of them are just side issues. The question that really matters, the pressing one, is this: When will Woods become a man? ''Let's please give the kid a break,'' said Mark Steinberg, Woods' agent, recently. Now, Steinberg is a nice guy who obviously cares about Woods. But his client is about to turn 34.The Woods who has emerged in the past few weeks doesn't seem to have matured much since. He seems to have simply graduated from lewd jokes to lewd behaviour. While his public persona grew up, he never did.There's inevitable dissonance in all of us between who we really are and what we show outwardly. But the athletes who seem healthiest and most balanced are those who have fewer reservations about sharing that with others. Interestingly, some of them become truly beloved. It may not be the best way to become a mass market endorser, but it's a decent way to build real relationships.

The Laramie Project — one of the most-performed plays of the last decade — is based on the true story of Matthew Shepard, the young man who, in October 1998, was savagely beaten and left to die in Laramie, Wyo. Almost instantly, Shepard's name became a kind of grim rallying cry for those drawing attention to hate crimes committed against gays.

Now there's an epilogue to The Laramie Project, and tonight more than a hundred theaters around the country will perform readings of the new play. Together with the first one, it constitutes a powerful version of Matthew Shepard's story. Excerpted from "A Boy's Life: For Matthew Shepard's killers, what does it take to pass as a man?" originally published in Harper's magazine, September 1999. Used by permission.