Meet my boy Dwaine. (Actually, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, you’ve “met” Dwaine already, several times.)

Dwaine is a high-powered executive in the finance and mortgaging biz. He’s smart, witty, sophisticated, and has his suits and shirts custom-made by clothing designers and tailors. He manages multi-million dollar accounts and hires and fires people older than him. People he trains inevitably and quickly become major money producers.

Yesterday evening, Dwaine and I had the following phone conversation.
Dwaine: You’re really living the life, Cindy. I wanna take all those vacations.
Me: Let’s go to Jamaica! You can show us around to where your family goes.
Dwaine: I’ve been back so much lately that I’m really kind of burned out on Jamaica. Let’s plan something for Brazil or Australia, those are two places I really want to go.
Me: You know, Brazil is supposed to have some of the most beautiful women in the world. But Australia has koala bears.
Dwaine: Aren’t koala bears the cutest darn things in the world? I don’t mean to sound gay, but they’re just so cute! They’re a lot cuter than most other animals.
Me: Yeah, let’s go to Australia so I can go hug a koala bear. I probably couldn’t bring one home, tho. Customs wouldn’t allow it. But I wanna have one hug me like they hug a tree. It can just hang onto my middle.
Dwaine: *pause* Now I wanna hug a koala bear.
Me: *laughing at his wishful statement*
Dwaine: They really are the only animals that automatically hug you just to hug you.
Me: Well, monkeys, but they’re kinda creepy to me.
Dwaine: Yeah, I don’t care for monkeys. I don’t want something that’ll hug me and then try to pick my pockets at the same time. Koala bears hug you just to hug you, cuz they hug trees, there’s no ulterior motive. Like dogs, when they hug you, they’re trying to hump your leg. Koalas just hug you.
*silence on both ends. We’re both thinking the same thing.*
Dwaine: I wanna go hug a koala bear.
Me: You know I’m gonna blog this.
Dwaine: You can title it “I Wanna Hug a Koala Bear.” But you better not make me sound gay!
Me: Okay, I’ll title it “Dwaine wants to hug a koala bear.” And then the body of the post will say, “He told me so last night.” That’s it.
Dwaine: No, you better qualify that statement if you’re gonna write that! You have to explain what we were talking about!

Okay, so I gave it some context, but does it really make him look any less sissy?

I love my friends.