Vanity, thy name is...

The old days when that answer would reasonably be women seems to be over.

Seems like these days, it would be gay men mostly :) Although I do occasionally pander to the generally-held ( though largely erroneous ) notion that the majority of gay men are all shallow, superficial, splendidly-built beings far more interested in a good time ( preferably in the cloistered relative safety of the seedy backrooms ) than anything substantial, that doesn't mean that I actually ascribe to all the rules.


Ooh I am so pretty
Honestly, never been all that interested in fancy frills and finery... sure I might ogle the beautifully dolled up mannequins posing in expensive stores and purchase a respectable shirt or two as a reasonable deterrent from looking like a slob ( we do have a meagre clothing allowance after all ). But that's about it.

Without the aid of radical reconstructive surgery - or an excruciatingly taxing bodybuilding regimen, there's only so much Raoul can do after all :)

Hell, I know how I look and I'm certainly not going to be winning the Cleo Bachelor Award anytime soon ( despite how far the standards might have fallen lately ). It's alright actually, capricious genetics just didn't see fit to gift me with gloriously unblemished sunkissed skin, radiant raven curls and a toothy smile that would be the pride of an orthodontist. Know myself well enough and I know my strengths and weaknesses - so any untoward praise on my miserably average looks would only garner strong suspicion.

Getting ready for a day out doesn't take much time on my part. Apart from taking a short time to choose a reasonably conservative ensemble that hopefully doesn't blind an unwitting passerby ( or lead to an arrest by the progressive fashion police ), I only take the time to run a comb through my unruly, untameable hair - without which it'd look like I'd been running through a screaming wind tunnel.

Certainly far from the average gay boy who spends more than an hour in the bathroom preening in front of the mirror with a shocking parade of facial cleansers, hair products and other assorted beauty regimen paraphernalia lined up in front. Forget about anorexic celebrity nymphettes. There are gay men out there who haven't eaten a grain of rice in months in a desperate bid to achieve that near-impossible sculpted six-pack. And did you hear there's the one who'd walk for miles braving fire, ridicule and torture just to retrieve his spectacular James Dean shades for a dance class. And even that man who'd risk almost certain corneal ulceration just for the sake of looking fab without his regular prescription glasses.

Hell, even Charming Calvin has his little quirks like his peculiarly touch-me-not hair that withstands even the tempestuous force of a hurricane :)