Confessions of a metrosexual

Hello. My name is Andy, and I am a metrosexual.\nInstead of the wide range of people you may see at an AA meeting, Metrosexuals Anonymous is filled with 20 and 30-something men -- all well-dressed. We sit up straight in the chair, and our coats are either tucked neatly underneath our chairs or hung in the closet by the door.\nThe guy at the front with highlighted hair (stylishly messy), wearing whiskered jeans and a fitted T-shirt motions to me.\n"Welcome, Andy! I'm glad you decided to join us," says the group leader. "Would you like to tell us when you first knew you were a metrosexual?"\nSlightly nervous, I launch right into my story.\nEver since I was a child, I always took my time in the bathroom in the morning. Brushing my teeth, styling my hair and making sure every inch of me is clean and well groomed, I spend an average of 30 minutes from shower to shave.\nI first suspected it when I would walk by an Express for Men or a Banana Republic and my head would turn to see what the mannequins were wearing. I would take trips to Chicago with my girlfriend and marvel at the haute-couture French-cuff shirts at Neiman-Marcus and Saks Fifth Avenue. It wasn't until I decided to get highlights in my hair and I was sitting in the salon chair with a pink cloth around me and tin foil covering my scalp that I stared at myself in the mirror and realized, "Oh my God" I'm a metrosexual."\nDuring the next few weeks, I was in denial. I went for days without shaving and actually didn't brush my teeth for 24 hours. Finally, after the fourth meal, my mouth felt so dirty that I broke down and scrubbed my teeth for the better part of 20 minutes. I tried to tell myself that I was just a regular guy. Gimme a Bud Light and the Colts over a merlot and a ballet any day- that was my attitude.\nIt didn't last long. I went to see "Showboat" at the local theatre and fell off the wagon. I decided to embrace who I was.\nWho cares if people talk? And boy, do they talk. I walk into a room wearing a mock-neck sweater, Kenneth Cole jeans, my brown hair dusted with blond, and I can practically smell the air ripe with assumptions. Does it bother me? No. My best friend is gay. So what if my favorite movie is "Breakfast at Tiffany's" or if my book bag looks more like a "man bag" than most others? If it means having to perform the "smell test" to see if my clothes are clean or giving away all but one of my 14 colorful dress shirts to prove my sexuality, let 'em assume away.\nIt has often been conjectured that Neil Simon's play, "The Odd Couple" was really about closet homosexuals. I don't buy it. I think that Felix Unger was an early evolution of a metrosexual -- fastidiously clean, well-dressed and well-acquainted with his emotional side. He was ahead of his time, and I consider him to be to the metrosexual community what Oscar Wilde and Ellen DeGeneres were to the homosexual population.\nAs I stand at the front of the room, I see several men nodding, able to relate, or even crying. I wind down my tirade, glad to get that off my chest.\n"Thank you," I say, and I step down. Applause fills the room.\nNo longer are we in hiding. No longer can it be claimed that metrosexuals do not exist. Metrosexuality is rapidly becoming a bigger and bigger part of American culture, and soon the men's rooms in bars, restaurants and shops will be piping in showtunes instead of country music.\nMy sponsor beams at me proudly as I sit back down, careful to smooth out my trousers so they don't wrinkle the carefully-pressed. crease.