[Update: Stuart has popped in with his response, and it's a very interesting take - He sees metrosexuality as being the combination of a man with vanity and some superficial aspects of a "typical" female - good read]

Ms. Bitch sez:

I'd like to dedicate this entry to the biggest metrosexual that I've personally known, Rory Cameron Lucien Blyth.

OK - That got my attention.

She continues:

A "metrosexual" can refer to either a man who lives in a urban area who is a 'dandy' and narcissistic, or it can simply mean a heterosexual man who is in touch with his "feminine side"...

Basically, a metrosexual is a straight guy who everyone (except gay people) thinks is gay.

While I agree with Julie that I'm someone people would probably consider to be an accomplished "metrosexual," the confusing thing to me is this business of being in touch with my "feminine side."

For those among you who haven't met me, it isn't at all uncommon for people to think (sometimes for years) that I'm gay. I haven't been able to figure this one out, but it seems that Julie has touched on it a little bit here: I'm a "metrosexual."

I've been aware of this for some time. If I had a nickel for every time someone thought I was gay, then I'd have more nickels than you do.

But, again, this is confusing to me. Note that I'm not actually bothered when people think I'm gay. I just don't know why they do it.

I don't see myself as appearing gay. Sure, there was a time in college when my drunken alter ego was a gay aerobics instructor, but that just served to break the ice at parties where people were worried about acting stupid. It's easy to get the room going when you raise the stupidity bar to new heights. It resulted in some interesting situations, like coming to at 3:00 AM, duct-taped to two tables, missing most of my clothing, with a six-foot flagpole shooting up from between my legs, an empty fifth of Bacardi sticking grotesquely out of my pocket, and, horror of horrors, to find that someone's taken my gun.

I think acting like a gay aerobics instructor is worth situations like that. It was fun.

However, it stopped there. In my daily sober life, I've just been me, and I don't understand this business of seeming gay to people. There are many, many other guys on this planet who seem infinitely more gay than I do.

Just the other night, I was in line at the video store. There was a huge jock type ahead of me - He had the muscle, the backwards baseball cap, and the beer gut. He was asking for the wrestling videos.

Hello-o-o-o-o-o. Check this out:

People think I'm gay because:

• I have extraordinarily good fashion sense
• I speak in complete sentences
• I have a girlfriend

People think the jockish guy at the video store is really manly because:

• He's been advertising beer on his clothing since age three
• He speaks in grunts
• He's asking for the videos of greasy men with long hair in tiger-striped one-piece bathing suits and nylons so that he can take them back to the pad and watch them, not with women, but in his dirty skivvies with the rest of the football team, scratching his (and possibly other people's) private parts while cheering in falsetto for his favorite scantily clad male in a competition that involves squirming around on the floor in suggestive positions with other scantily clad males, most of whom are wearing more makeup than the unfortunate cloning accident of Tammy Faye Baker and a cheap hooker.

And I'm the one in touch with my feminine side? I'm the one everybody thinks is gay?

I've actually thought about my masculinity in terms of liquid nitrogen. They say that liquid nitrogen is "so cold that it's hot." I like to think that I'm so masculine that everybody thinks I couldn't possibly be straight.

I also wonder about the concept of metrosexuality: Is it a strictly American thing? Because in the time that I spent in Europe, people didn't think I was gay at all - They all thought I was German, which is different. There was the one guy who tried to convince me that I was gay, but that implies that he didn't really think I was.

In short, I guess I fit the bill of a metrosexual in this country, but the strange thing is that it seems to be due to my incredible sex appeal to women.

Weird.