The French Metro Connection

Oh! The Irony!

When I was away last weekend, my husband cut his hand quite badly. He really should have had stitches. Had I been home, I would have provided that service. Because I wasn’t, he decided to just use bandages, as a result he has a very bad scar forming as this gash heals.

Tonight, while we were talking with our daughter about a friend and the friend-of-that-friend from school, I noticed my husband’s wound. The conversation was about how the friend of my daughter’s friend came half out of the closet. That is to say that he announced that he is bisexual. Claudia’s friend (I will call him Eric) had been talking with her about how he wants to support his friend, and at the same time worries other students will believe he is gay, or at least bisexual himself. Why would they think this? Well, Eric is what one might call “metro.” This means, in its most basic definition, that he is a male who cares about fashion and appearances but who is also otherwise heterosexual.

As family conversations go, there are tangents and connections and webs that spin. Someone’s comments remind a listener of something, and he or she interjects. The conversation takes a turn then wends its way back to the topic at hand. And, speaking of “at hand” I’ll return to my husband’s terrible cut. As my daughter talked about the situation with Eric, I interrupted with continued astonishment at how bad my husband’s wound really was and is. I then added that such a scar would typically be a conversation piece among men. We both laughed at this because the circumstances that led to his injury were not the typical “guy” fair; my husband cut his hand while washing his French coffee press.

Claudia called out, “Dad, you are metro!” We all laughed because my husband is as “womanly” as he is “manly.” What I mean by this is that while he drinks beer, starts all the fires in the fire pit and regularly takes out the trash, not to mention his job as a carpenter, all stereotypical “man” things, he also likes coffee from a French press, prefers scented soap in the shower and is always the one lighting candles as he prefers the romantic setting they create. Thus, while he might not be “metro” in the fashion department, there are plenty of ways in which he still might qualify under this designation.

I laughed and said, “Oh, it must have been pretty funny telling the guys at work about it!”

Chris replied, “You have no idea. They all asked about the bandage, of course. I told them I cut it when my French coffee press broke. They wanted to know if it was ‘on’ when I put my hand into it. ‘On?’ I questioned, then said, ‘no, it’s not mechanical, it’s a coffee press.’”

Of course, the emphasis on “coffee press” did nothing to clarify the confusion of his blue-collar co-workers who continued to think he was talking about a bean grinder.

We all laughed about the irony of it all: my carpenter husband not only cutting his hand on a French coffee press, but also while he was the one washing it!