A Fashionable Affair

By Adam Kuhn
Posted Friday, August 24, 2007

When you're single and dating, you're likely to come across quite a variety of interesting people. Some people fall into categories. Some do not. And some are so strange, the experience will never leave your memory.

Some guys can even be categorized by the brand of clothing they wear. Not including the alien-like fashionistas that aimlessly wander around SoHo, there’s the Gap man, who is usually dressed in corporate casual and secretly wants a family and a big house upstate, there’s the H & M man, who’s always dressed to impress for any occasion, but like the clothes, once he goes through the wash, he’s never the same again. And then, there’s the Sisley man…

A few weeks into my New York adventures, I met someone exquisite. He was French, sophisticated, and always proper for a night on the town. But after a few nights out for drinks in the same week, the Sisley man, like the clothes, can get a little expensive.

In the land of the eight-dollar pack of cigarettes and the nine-dollar martini, I was wondering if I was getting too ahead of myself to enjoy the pleasures of Sisley just yet. As fate would have it, we hit it off smashingly.

There’s something about European men that make American men look like so much less. They have free health care and super-efficient public service, and even though my Sisley man isn’t very political and loves New York, his foreign demeanor alone somehow exposes how strange American culture is and how flawed United States policy is.

This wasn’t my first international encounter. About four years ago, I met a beautiful German man at a hotel in Boston. He was smooth, charming, and god damn, was he pretty. By some strange force of the universe, he found himself attracted to me.

My last day in Boston, I decided to be adventurous and bring him up to my room. At the last possible moment, I found out that the people I was staying with checked out and turned in our keys. There was no way in. We went back down to the lobby, I kissed him goodbye, and that was that. He was 20. I was 16.

Four years went by and I never so much as called him, but apparently he held on to my e-mail address and found me on MySpace the other day. We were mutually pleased to hear from each other. Appropriately inappropriate to categorize, he’s now a fashion designer in Berlin.

The other night, when I was leaving Mr. Sisley’s apartment after ‘a night in Paris’ if you will, I found myself at some strange crossroad where fashion and New York City meet. Decked in my ‘I just woke up in a hot guy’s bed and had no time to shower because I was already 20 minutes late for a class’ outfit, it was time to walk the runway… the runway called West Fourth Street.

Even though it was embarrassing, the experience gave me a secret rush. My eyes were still adjusting to the outside light, and my hair was probably all over the place, but walking past all of those people in the West Village, I relished in the thought, “I just had sex, and you just had lunch.”

Since gay men have a secret unwritten marriage with fashion, it was no surprise that I was being confused as a fashion major at my school. I suppose that’s the consequence I have to put up with for having some concern with my appearance. And to be quite honest, if gay man plus fashion equals bouncy queens running around the second floor in Gucci, Dolce, and Dior, I was plenty satisfied with Sisley plus me equals two smitten city boys running around the West Village.

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