My Dandy Husband

George called me from work today. At teh end of our conversation, I remembered a box had arrived for him from Brooks Brothers and told him. He got very excite.
“Did you see my Prince of Wales walking coat?” he asked.
“What?” I replied.
“My Prince of Wales walking coat,” he continued.
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. 
“Did you open the box?”
“No, why? Did you order a Prince of Wales walking coat?”
I finally started to understand what he was saying, but I was a little surprised he was asking me since he had just put a moratorium on spending besides groceries and diapers.
“Open it.”
No one can ever accuse George of not being succinct.
I opened it while still on the phone.
“Wooo,” I whistled. “Very hot. A houndstooth plaid coat lined in chocolate. Very gorgeous.”
It better be with a $600 price tag. My man of “simple tastes,” or so he’s always telling me.
“Do you like it?” he asks in his husky sexy voice.
“I love it. I can just picture you walking, no loping over the moors wearing it, your hounds by your side. You just need some knee high wellies to go with it.” And visions of Heathcliff and Cathy lope in my head.
George is kind of like a gay man in a straight man’s body. He loves fine wine, intellectual discussions of said wine, high art, Hermes loafers that look like ballet slippers, and Louis Vuitton duffel bags. Sometimes I worry he’s going to come out of the closet, but sexually, he seems quite straight to me.
At least so far.
But there’s no denying. He’s a fop, a dandy, a fashion lover who has nailed down the incredibly sexy absent-minded-professor look (albeit in Hugo Boss suits ala Cary Grant in North by Northwest). Even when he’s casually dressed in his slouchy but perfectly fitted sweaters and jeans, he looks perfectly turned out.
“Why do you always look so perfect?” I ask him from the realm of not having combed my hair for a few days in my pink sweats stained with oatmeal from Henry’s breakfast, mud smeared across my chest from carrying babies with dirty hands.
“I have perfected my look of casual insouciance,” he tells me. Even his wild unruly mussed hair looks perfect.
I sigh. With exasperation, with despair, with amusement, and always, always, with desire.