Opera Attire

Dear George,

We had tickets for the opera at Music Hall last Saturday night.  We were running late, and I asked Katja if she could pick out some clothes for me.  I always ask her that because she has a much better sense of these things.  This time she chose a pair of tan slacks, a dark blue short-sleeved linen shirt, and a cream-colored sports jacket.  It looked fine to me.  I started putting the shirt on, but I had a lot of trouble.  The buttons and the buttonholes were small, it took a lot of effort to get each button fastened, and, besides that, the buttons were on the wrong side of the shirt.  All in all, it felt very awkward.  Suddenly it dawned on me that this might not even be a man’s shirt.  I asked Katja, but she said that was silly.  She said she’d bought the shirt in the men’s department, and it had been in my closet for a long time.  I continued struggling with the buttons.  After several minutes I finally finished the last button.  But then I discovered that it wasn’t even a short-sleeved shirt.  The sleeves extended all the way down to the middle of my forearms, ending halfway between the wrist and the elbow, and each sleeve had a large slit in it.  “This isn’t a man’s shirt.”   I protested.  “It’s a woman’s blouse.”   “No it’s not,” Katja said, “this is the new style that men are wearing.”   Just to prove it to me, she had me bend over so she could check the label.  Much to her surprise, the label was for a women’s clothing manufacturer.  Katja was amazed.  She wondered if Macy’s had mistakenly stocked a woman’s blouse among its men’s shirts.  By then we were ten minutes past our planned departure time, and I was getting nervous about whether we would make it to the opera at all.  Since my sport jacket would cover up the blouse’s sleeves, I decided to go with what I was wearing rather than having to unbutton it and start all over.

We got to Music Hall in the nick of time.  The auditorium was packed, and the temperature was on the warm side.  By the middle of the first act I was feeling unpleasantly hot, and I decided I’d have to take my jacket off.  If my nearby seatmates thought that I looked strange in my wife’s blouse, that’s just how it would be.  At the intermission I put my sports jacket back on, and we went out to the lobby for a glass of wine.  I noticed a large poster that I hadn’t seen when we came in.  It announced that tonight was gay pride night at the opera.  That was a funny coincidence.  Actually, if I had to wear some of Katja’s clothes to the opera, this was probably a good night to do it.  At least I was in the midst of a crowd that would be receptive to gender diversity.

Love,

Dave

G-mail Comments

-Jennifer M (7-21):  Great story.  :-)

-Donna D (7-17):  BRAVO, david. well done :)  donna