MEN WHO LOVE MEN
October 31st 2008 04:13
I found myself in Myer with Barry to help him find date clothes worthy enough for the love of his life.
“Listen,” I told him. “I don’t see why you need me to come with you for this sort of stuff. You should’ve called Vail. Or your buddy, what’s her face, Maureen.”
“Dean, out of all of us, you like, call me a bogan the most, so you can give me the most honest advice.” Barry lifted up a yellow V-neck t-shirt and showed it to me. “Does this look too gay?”
“I don’t know, okay? I’m not good with this stuff.”
Barry sighed. “Listen, I’m in love, okay? For the first time in my life, I’m in love. I can’t stuff this up, man, not this one.”
“You’re nineteen, you can’t be in love. Plus you met him at the Beat.”
“I feel sorry for you,” Barry said. “How about this one?”
“What’s wrong with your bogan clothes?”
“Like, everything?”
We visited General Pants. The place was littered with V-neck t-shirts and baggy t-shirts and skinny jeans and short denim shorts and shirts with giant black and white photos and the guy who was working there looked me up and down, tried to smile and then walked away.
Barry picked a shirt up and then walked to the changing room. I followed him to the door. I leant against a wall. “So, like, Barry, you’re never going to like a woman, like, ever again?”
“So, Dean, are you ever going to ever like a man?”
“You’re clever.”
“I know,” Barry said through the changing room door.
I thought for a moment. “I reckon you should just stick to what you wear now. Be yourself, man.”
“You have to try harder when it comes to people you love.”
I sighed. “You’ve only dated this guy once, haven’t you?”
“Yup.”
“You’re an idiot.”
“You’re a writer, Dean. Appreciate it. Write a gay little poem about it or something.”
“I think I will!”
We spent four hours looking for clothes. In the end Barry bought a V-neck t-shirt, another V-neck t-shirt, a giant baggy shirt with a large black and white photo on it, a baggy V-neck t-shirt that can be buttoned up, extremely tight jeans that showed his bulge and short shorts and bright green shoes. “That’s fucked up,” I eventually decided to say. “Just be who you are!”
“I’ll treat you to a pizza, bro,” Barry said.
“Okay.”
We went and ate some pizza. Barry told me how his dad beat him up so badly once so he ran away for three weeks and stayed with a teacher. We all get beaten up once in a while, I guess, I said. Barry laughed at that for some reason. He was in a good mood. He was in the best mood I had ever seen him in.
“You tell me how this date with your love of your life goes,” I said. “The one who won’t let you be yourself.”
“The G-rated version or the no-condoms-herpes-turkey-slap version?”
“What do you reckon, Barry?”
Barry laughed. He said goodbye.
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