Complexes One Through One Thousand Eighty-Eight

It's no secret that I love gay men. I love everything about them. The dancing, the singing, the fashion, the bitchiness, the devotion to good skin care.

It just so happens that most of the gay men I know are what you'd call easily-identifiable gay men. Stereotypical. They've been theater majors who squirmed when they got cast as Prince Charming and had to kiss Cinderella. They've been the kind to break into a full-out Michael Jackson routine on the dance floor at Homecoming. They've been the kind who, after finding out you've been wronged by yet another heterosexual man, will lay you down, stroke your hair, sing you a song, and tell you how fabulous you are.

I love that, and I love them. But sometimes, sometimes, sometimes, the men I love have a tendency to strengthen certain complexes I have. Take, for instance, yesterday and my Big Gay Afternoon with one of my old-time friends who I will, for the sake of this entry, call Pedro.

Pedro and I had a lovely afternoon. We had lunch at a fabulous yet unassuming Chinese restaurant on the Boulevard. We gorged ourselves on mango curry, on delicate spring rolls, on chicken and stir-fried rice noodles. We commented on a woman's beautiful purple suede blazer and how much we hated slouchy metallic purses. We talked about boys. We said they were stupid and that surely they should just face facts: we are fun-loving and they should love us.

After lunch, Pedro and I went to the mall, where we spent half an hour in The Body Shop, picking out a whole new skin care regimen for Pedro's sensitive pores. I got a free deoderizing/invigorating peppermint foot spray and a trial-sized body scrub just for filling out a survey. Pedro stocked up on vitamin E-based night creams.

Then we were back in the car.

"So, did you make an appointment with my hairdresser yet?" Pedro asked. He knew I was having trouble finding a hairdresser I liked as much as the Aveda stylist I had in Mankato. His hairdresser, he said, was a dream. An absolute dream. So he slipped me her card after I got my haircut at one place and disliked the new way the layers laid.

"No," I told him. "I can't afford to get my haircut every four weeks. I'm poor. Also, I'd like my next haircut to coincide with my trip to Minnesota."

Pedro looked disappointed, and then he frowned at my hair. "Hmmm," he said. "What products do you use?"

I told him I used straightening shampoo and straightening hot iron cream, since I'm still in the pin-straight and sleek mood. When he heard the word cream, Pedro frowned again.

"Oh," he said. "I see."

"What?" I asked. I reached up to touch my hair. "What's wrong with my hair?"

"Nothing," he said. But then--two seconds later--he looked at me and smiled kindly. "I think maybe you need a serum."

"A serum?" I asked. "What's the difference?"

"Well," he said, "serum would add more shine and volume."

So, basically, that was him telling me I have flat, lifeless, and dull hair.

"PEDRO!" I said. "I like my hair! I think it's very sleek when straight-ironed!"

"All I'm saying is maybe you should try some serum," he said. "That's all."

Four minutes down the road and Pedro had moved on to discussing my purse. He picked it up and marveled at its new cuteness: blue, buckled, little. "Love it," he said.

"It's new."

"It's great. Where did you get it?" he asked.

"JC Penney's," I said. I didn't add that it had been on sale for seventeen dollars.

Pedro made a face. "Ohhhh," he said. He wrinkled up his nose.

Apparently the cuteness was diminished by the fact that it came from a department store. "Snob," I said.

Four more minutes down the road and Pedro--an employee of Express--was mocking girls who shopped at department stores and, and, and at New York and Company, which, I don't need to tell you, supplies most of my teacher clothes and accessories. The earrings. Ohhh, the earrings.

"New York and Company is for giraffe-legged girls," Pedro said. "And they have no attractive tops."

I gripped the steering wheel and tried not to think about the three new tops I'd just purchased from that store. I tried not to think how cute I thought they were, and how I was wearing one of them right at that moment.

A mile down the road I was pulling back in to the school where we both teach, and I was dropping him off at his car, and I was doing a mental tally of the complexes I'd managed to wrack up in a stretch of three hours. Hair? Check. Clothes? Check. Purse? Check. Giraffe legs? Check.

And I don't even think I have to tell you I obsessed about them (might still be) for the rest of the day, even later as I was sitting across from my cousin at the very cute, very swank Chocolate Bar in downtown Buffalo. Even as I was breaking open the chocolate ganache shell that draped itself over peanut butter mousse. How's my hair? I was thinking. Does this purse look cheap? Are my legs sticking out from this table? But then there were also these thoughts: Oh. Ohhhh. Ohhhh. Holy God. Why didn't I go to school to become a pasty chef? And those thoughts were clearly the more important ones of the evening.