Everybody's waiting for the man with the bag...

This Christmas of the many wonderful gifts I am grateful for I received one that particularly surprised and delighted me. I asked "Santa" (my mother creepily demands we refer to her as Santa in all our holiday gift-receiving transactions) for a new man-bag and I got the most perfect man-bag that ever existed.

I have been a fan of the man-bag for many years now. I have never liked the idea of a wallet in my pants pocket, especially since I prefer to pack as much of my life into one as possible. My wallets are always too heavy and bulging to keep in your pants, not to mention that I enjoy toting all sorts of essential things besides ID and money with me. Not satisfied with the frat-boy look of many backpacks while in college, and fed up with the sexist traditions of allowing only women to walk around with purses, I got myself a bag. A manly bag to store my manly things. Like moisturizers and lip balms and accessories. Messenger bags were only newly in style and man-bags fast became an essential part of life in the city. I've gone through many a man-bag in my time, and even gave hand-me-down bags to friends. It's my own version of gay-it forward.

So this Christmas when I told Mommy-Claus to get me a new man-bag that looked professional, almost briefcasey, I had no idea her gaydar would be so perfectly honed to choose such an ideal bag for my purposes. What makes this bag so wonderful? For starters, it's a beautiful briefcase from Kenneth Cole. Excellent quality. Secondly, it came in a sack. Any man-bag that comes in its own man-bag must be wonderful. But the true campy joy of this bag came only days later when I was switching out of my old bag into this new and improved model. I was removing the tag only to discover the style name. Christina Flappelgate! Can you believe it? My man-bag's name is a ridiculous play on words. It's first name is Christina! AND it sounds like a drag queen. What more can a boy ask for?

Suffice it to say it was a very merry holiday.