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fellowship from the Society of Fellows, a sixty-year-old organization that had no requirements other than attending dinners with famous writers and scientists at a grand mahogany table once owned by Oliver Wendell Holmes. Of the two dozen or so Junior Fellows in residence each year, a few would volunteer to help plan meals and pair food with bottles from the society’s private wine cellar. In a particularly inept attempt to fit in, I agreed to take on this task. The problem was, I knew nothing about wine. I paired red wine with fish and chose modern California wines rather than the twenty-year-old French Burgundies that lined the cellar. My companions were not pleased. Vomit was mentioned several times.
    I decided to hold a tasting so I could take notes and improve my selections. But when the guests began arriving in their loafers and barn jackets—accompanied by dates who seemed to be multiple incarnations of the same strawberry blond—disaster struck again. I tapped a glass with a knife and said, “Welcome! Tonight we begin with a 1982 Château Lee—
”
    With my mouth open, I realized I had no idea how to pronounce this French word. Then Analise leaned over and whispered, “Lee-oh-
nay
.”
    Afterward, she took me aside. “These are white wine glasses,” she said.
    â€œThat’s all I could find,” I said.
    â€œThis is the Society of Fellows,” she said. “You should have the right stemware.”
    Stemware? I slumped. “It looks like I’m going to be a real disaster as wine steward. I had no idea it was so technical.”
    She gave me a warm smile. “It’s not that hard once you know afew basic things.” With that, she commenced a quick-and-dirty introduction in the basics of wine. Soon she was asking me about India and telling me about her visits there as a teenager and college student. Her parents had thought of it as a punishment, sending her there to “think things over,” but she’d loved it.
    â€œI feel so much smarter when I come back because I just don’t give a shit about what anybody else thinks. That’s the answer, Sudhir—just don’t give a shit. Same with wine. There’s no right or wrong, really. It’s about knowing what you like.” Then she gave me a merry wink, my first true welcome to the inner sanctums of America’s elite. “You just have to start drinking—a
lot
,” she said.
    I laughed. After that, everything was easier.
    Years later, away from eating clubs and ensconced in New York strip clubs, I found myself needing another Analise who could serve as my consigliere. But now the stakes were higher than scorn and a few rolling eyes from my colleagues. There were only so many times bouncers and security guards would gently escort me into the back room for a conversation. In my work with gangs, I discovered quickly that leaders would speak to me if I signaled that their peers were taking part. Maybe they thought I’d divulge their competitors’ secrets, but I knew that they mostly wanted me to affirm how much smarter, richer, more talented, and more violent they were relative to their competitors. Even if I never did that—and I rarely did—their jealousy was enough to make them willing participants. I was hoping that strip club managers would eventually join my study out of the same need for competition, but that happy occasion was years away at best. For now, I just needed them to let me in the door long enough to hear my offer.
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    O ver the next few months, by dint of persistent effort, I did manage to convince eight or ten women to talk to me at least briefly. They told me about the fees they paid the clubs, the costs ofrenting the back rooms, the risks of being harassed or even beaten up for failing to pay. They told me that sometimes when they were in tight spots they had to take loans from the club manager,