Metrosexual Man Party a.k.a. How Men Shop

I'm a funny shaped human being, on the short side but pretty wide, not in a fat way (mostly) but in a stocky and no-shirts-fit kind of way. Big neck, big torso, not small middle, and all short. So shirts that fit around my neck go all the way down to my knees and the armpits of the shirts are tent-like. Remember David Byrne in that over-sized suit in 1983? That's me, only shorter and with less money. I recall a post in the summer where I complained about shorts really looking like longs on me.

So my father has the same problem. His solution, as he is a 62 year old man with money, is that he gets his shirts custom made. Nice stuff. I had it done about 5 years ago, and they are high-quality, perfectly fitting shirts. For a certain special day coming up next week, my dad decided that we need some new shirts.

So a guy with a cloth ruler, collar samples, and a hundred or so swatches of fabric came over to my house today. My dad came. One of my dad's business associates came along 'cause he likes my dad's shirts. There we were, sitting on my manly leather couch sorting through swatches on my manly pottery barn coffee table. Pretty quickly.

I picked out some great swatches. Some stripes, some mints, some lavenders, some patterns...really, the stuff will look great and won't make me look like a cartoon character.

But this is how men shop in their perfect world. Money is no object. The store comes to them. No trying on of anything. We can step out and buy a pink stripe, but only in the privacy of my our own homes. Custom shirt guy made a boatload of cash off of three men in less than 90 minutes, and one of those men, me, did not have to leave his living room.

And I will either look very, very good, or very, very much like my father, which isn't necessarily bad, it just is what it is and will therefore be difficult to feel anything other than like my father when I'm out in the world. And since he's my father, I'm really not sure what that is, other than a 62 year old man. But he didn't go for the purple herring bone pattern, nor the pink stripe. So I'll look like him, but with color.