Excerpted from The Reluctant Metrosexual
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Whether it is a sales technique designed to draw on the utter simplicity and singular focus of the male mind or just a biological function inherent to the breeding of the females of the Italian species, the women employed by these boutiques are inevitably gorgeous, fit-bodied creatures, all seemingly blessed by the Saint of Impossibly Tight-Fitting Pants (or Santa de Toe Camela, to use the vernacular).

The shopgirl at Marcello, clearly a strident disciple of this school of dressing, finished with the Austrian and walked in my direction, her wide smile and bare midriff a possible portent of good things to come. I did my best to seem cool, continuing to banter in broken Italian. But just as my subtle efforts were about to pay off, the train jumped its delicately laid tracks.

"Scusi, young lady, but could you help my son locate the shirts in his size?" my mother asked, speaking on my suddenly diminished behalf. “He can't seem to find them.”

Our tacit love connection now broken, the shopgirl's body language immediately shifted from playful to professional. Keeping a watchful eye on my mother, she measured me in a businesslike manner, pointed out the racks marked “16/39,” and then moved on to help another male customer, who, it appeared, was shopping without the assistance of a parental guardian.

It is nearly impossible for an American to sweep an Italian woman off her artfully shod feet without any handicapping at all; it is harder still when he is shopping with his mother, especially one who insists on adjusting his collar and combing his hair with her fingers.

“Are you still using that same barber?” my mother asked. I nodded my head yes. “Well, you really ought to come see Scott. I'm not sure what you are trying to achieve with all this, ” she added, straightening what had previously been my mussed, purposely unkempt hair—the all this, as it were.

Scott is my mother's hairstylist and right-hand man. The complexity of their relationship cannot be understated. He is present at even the most sacred of family functions and has a better read on the dynamics of my clan than my therapist does. Do I really want this man wielding sharp objects about my neck and face? I think not, and have thus respectfully declined my mother's offers to date.

“If you need some objective evidence of his skills, just look at what he's done for your father,” my mother offered, attempting to sway me with an argument rooted in forensics. My father, certainly a stylish man in his own right, has always refused to pay more than $20 for a haircut (“It's not the money, mind you, it's the principle of the thing”), and he's generally made his way in the world of commerce just fine. His hair has looked the same since Nixon was in office, no matter where he received the haircut or how much it cost. However, of late my mother has somehow convinced him to let Scott cut his hair, and to pay salon prices for the privilege.

My own hair now flattened and my dreams of a red-hot Italian lover suitably dashed, I turned my attention to selecting some shirts. Making a decision between shirts as lovely and low-priced as those I was perusing was not easy. But eventually I was able to narrow it down to three finalists. I liked them all, and I believe I have a fair sense of what might, to the general population, look appealing. Shirts are, after all, one of the strongholds
of my wardrobe arsenal, and the Italian patterns fall squarely into the wheelhouse of my style palette, which tends heavily toward checks, ginghams, and other linear designs (though I cannot keep my life in absolute symmetry, I do at least demand this level of perfection from my dress shirts).

“Those two are lovely, dear. But this one is a little garish, don't you think?” my mother said, holding the accused shirt with her fingertips, as though it were hazardous waste. “Of course, that's just my opinion. You're a grown man, and you should do as you wish, right?”

Though stated in the form of a question, her words were more an indictment than they were inquiry, and I knew the answer was that, while some people might choose to wear a shirt like the one she deemed garish, she would prefer that her son show a bit more subtlety. Her son, having learned long ago to defer to understatement, readily met this preference, handing the garish object back to the shopgirl and taking one last look into the cosmic brown eyes that had written him off minutes before.

Our selections made, mother walked over and thanked her for her assistance, complimenting her outfit and making a fast friend. I am not certain if she put in a good word for me, because I left before this transaction was completed. I had very little luck with the women in Italy, but my mother seemed to have the golden touch at every turn.

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