Could you please explain the notion of “acting gay”. What does that mean? Are you sugesting that gay people are easily identified by the way they appear?

You write about the “big city” as if it’s a theme park, citing your favorite tourist traps, “even [...] Boston Common and the Gardens.” What is the “even” supposed to imply? It sounds like you’re trying to establish your urban cred by showing that you’re brave enough to venture into the dangerous world of flowers and swan boats. You must really know your stuff, having gone all the way from the theater district to the park to Newbury Street! That’s, like, 9 whole blocks of Shakespeare in the park, kids playing baseball, and but a single Cheers. I can see why you count your blessings to be out of that urban hellhole. I guess the fact that you are posing on your book cover with a Red Sox bobble head and not a Fisher Cats toilet paper roll is just a way of showing how thankful you are to be out of there.

I like the way you say “the newly christened metrosexual man” as if the word was, you know, newly christened. “Metrosexual” was a stupid pop culture buzzword during the first George W. Bush administration (another notch in New Hampshire’s belt!). I hadn’t seen or heard the word for years until I came across this article. Good thing you have a culture savvy friend to feed you such hot topics for your column. If not for him you would have had to wait for “Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Seaon 1″ to hit the Londonderry TJ Maxx DVD bin just like everyone else.

Do you know what “quip” means? Here’s a hint: “How about those two?” is not one. Even if you had said something funny (which you didn’t), attributing “quips” to yourself makes you sound like a pathetic jerk. Nobody wants to hear someone tell tales of that time when they said something funny once.

The rest of the column is about you and your buddy sitting in the mall watching “two perfect guys” (“They’re God’s perfect creatures, according to today’s fashion experts,” your friend says. I like to imagine that you are hanging out with Stefano Gabbana or something). You make up things about them, and then make fun of those things. You thought “a slap fight was about to break out.” Man, that would have been funny, huh? If a slap fight had broken out? Your friend suspects “these guys wouldn’t know how to change the oil in their BMWs, but can change a tire on their $2,000 racing bikes in a flash.” Oh, jeez, these guys not only might possibly not know how to change oil, but also might own expensive bikes, and could possibly know how to maintain them? That’s so maybe unusual, perhaps worthy of derision, and probably not true at all! You guys are setting the comedy world ablaze.

Speaking of your friend, does he exist? He really reads like he’s just a piece of fiction designed to be the mouthpiece for your more offensive jokes, and it really seems like you were actually sitting in the mall all alone, sniffing the body lotion of strange men.

And, man, that part where your “friend” swtiches to an English accent as he pervs out about that guy’s thong? So hilarious, not only because European people are all gay?, I guess, but because funny accents are so effective on the written page. And these guys are into having “fun” that probably includes playing soccer? Will the zany Euro antics that you imagined and never actually happened ever stop!? Let me try my hand at it: Joe is a simple guy who wears jeans and button-down shirts. He’s into New Hampshire, which probably means he spends 3 months a year on a nude vision quest in the White Mountains, followed by leaf peeping on I-95 with Dan Brown, followed by… wait a minute, I ran out of notable things in New Hampshire.

“These guys are a lot more in touch with their feminine sides than the average heterosexual guy,” says your friend. Which makes me wonder how you know these guys are straight. You don’t. Just like everything else, it’s something you’re imagining because you think it’s funny. Also, it’s socially more acceptable to make fun of two straight guys who act like “dandies.” If you had written this exact article but made them gay, it would be seen by even the simplest out-in-the-country New Hampshire guy as blatant, narrow-minded homophobia. Or at the very least, the run-of-the-mill xenophobia of a simple man in a scary, big city mall.

You like nice clothes, but you hardly ever buy them. Uh, good for you for sublimating your desires in order to conform to cultural norms, I guess? Fie on these guys for following through on the same impulses you have, but deny. Why mention that you’re not confused about your identity? Are these guys? Doesn’t seem like it. It’s an odd thing to bring up out of nowhere. And then you mention that you’re “sure that [you're] an old guy, in the eyes of [...] metrosexuals.” You know, I bet if you asked nicely they would hang out with you, Joe! You’ll never know unless you try. Maybe you could go shopping for nice clothes together. See, you have common interests! And I bet they’d love to hear that you totally nailed their body lotion scents from across the mall. That’s an impressive skill!

Really, though, it’s rude to sit and stare at strange men’s “steel-hard buns” and then insult them, on a public forum, for a lifestyle that you invented. Early in the article you mention “the young ladies out there looking to be seen by all.” You really have a problem with people you imagine want to be seen by some creepy dude from New Hampshire. Allow me to unburden you: they don’t.

Metrosexual is a social class, like yuppies, Emo’s, or any of the others.

I will agree with you on the words “Prancing” and “Dandy” being recognized slang for homosexuals.

This story has been so misconstrued into a program agenda that the same people are posting with different log on names.

Life is too short to get worked up over a column about satire.