CALL ME SNAKE

A friendly reader–and a celebrated blogger in her own right–recently asked whether I considered myself “metrosexual,” a term I hadn’t heard of before. When she described it–involving a slavish adherence to fashion and the like–I knew it was not me. The antithesis, in fact. What handball player with any self respect would call himself metrosexual?

That was the end of the story until yesterday, when I came across something written by a cosmologist I’ve talked with before, who used to be in Chicago. He spoke of his neighborhood there, saying “I was truly in my yuppie-metrosexual element.” That word again. I’d never seen it before in my life and now it had reared its ugly head twice in two days. Whereas I recoiled from the suggestion, this guy seemed to embrace the term, without any trace of embarrassment. Which shows that you don’t necessarily know someone, just because you’ve talked a few times about the birth, evolution, and end of the universe. And he doesn’t know a thing about me, since I was the guy asking the questions, saying little and revealing even less. On many issues of politics, I know we agree. But when it comes to that one 11-letter word, we’re worlds apart.