At the beginning of Summer I was asked by a male friend of mine to go shopping. It puzzled me at first because this particular friend of mine is absolutely smitten with his girlfriend and figured, why go shopping with me when you can go with her instead?
My second thought was, “Oh! He’s planning to buy a present for her and needs a female opinion?”
Nope, I was wrong.
While he knew that his girlfriend wouldn’t have minded what he was purchasing, he still felt most comfortable taking me. (Whatever rocks your boat buddy!)
So, here we were in the middle of a busy shopping center just before Christmas when I ask him, “What are we shopping for?”
He replies with, “A dress.” Without much thought I say, “A formal dress? Summer dress? Party dress?”, thinking I was talking to one of my closest girlfriends.
“No. A sarong. For me!”
I do a double-take. Pardon me? Did I just hear you correctly? You, a twenty-five year-old male who is a full-time labourer wants to buy a sarong?
I clear my throat and ask him what’s ‘going on’. Is there something about him that I don’t know about?
He laughs and explains that he’s not into cross-dressing, just during the Summer months he likes to wear sarongs around the house instead of shorts.
I will admit I laughed. I laughed so hard I think I offended him by doing so. I just didn’t know how else to respond to this.
But there we were going through several beach stores looking for a sarong with a pattern that wasn’t too feminine for him, and using me as a purchase buffer. So that’s he wanted me to tag along.
After we had shopped enough and picked up three sarongs that wasn’t too girly for him, he had dropped me home. I felt like I done a good deed – no matter how odd it was to begin with.
A few days later on a blistering hot day I had seen a photo uploaded onto his Facebook of him wearing one of the sarongs we had bought together. I didn’t say anything, all I did was ‘Like’ the photo.
Of course, comments that were left from his mates ranging from, WTF to calling him names and asking him if there was anything he wanted to ‘come out’ about.
But he had later summarised it perfectly: “Who cares what I look like – I’m comfortable!”
Amen to that dude!
