Are you gays nuts for plaid or what?

I thought perhaps it was my imagination: Whenever I wandered through the Castro, I saw you wearing them. But then I checked out Abercrombie & Fitch today, and there they were: four styles of shorts in 13 different plaids, from $49.50 to $59.50 (left). Not exactly the madras shorts Sparky's been looking for, like these at Banana Republic, or the sort recommended by my college chum Lisa in her Official Preppy Handbook. But close!

Madras makes me think of summers in Maine, where I worked as a teen-age au pair for a rich family on their private 23-acre island in the middle of Rangeley Lake. Their friends and relatives included a Gimbels Department Store heir and a Palm Beach stockbroker who stored pot in a Carr's water biscuit tin in his bank safe-deposit box. They entertained themselves racing vintage Chris-Craft runabouts across the lake. See, Sparky? I was born to be rich!