Smooth as a baby's bottom........

I considered, for most of my adult life, Buddy as being the first "Metrosexual". And I am not meaning the first of our group of boys. I mean THE first "Metrosexual".  Anywhere.  He was this first person I knew that was so attuned to his appearance. His fashion and esthetic interests ranged from clothing to footwear to timepieces to shall we say, personal grooming.

Buddy was the first of us to go in for the "mani, pedi" and on a few occasions when he would meet me in the nail salon upon being asked what he needed by the lovely Asian woman at the desk he would invariably respond with a completely straight face, "bikini wax".  

Only when she revealed the horror she anticipated would he smile and say "hook me up with the mani, pedi like my boy is getting".  Let's just say she was relieved.

I had mentioned before of our forays to Club Med in the 1980's. On our first trip there young David Zitman and I became intimately acquainted with the depth of Buddy's "Metrosexual" nature.  You see it was about this time in Buddy's life that body grooming was becoming his underlying cosmetic concern . Zitman and I were somewhat alarmed when upon unpacking our first day in Club Med Buddy began to arrange a series of mirrors around the bathroom in an alignment that might be more normally seen at a NASA testing facility.

He would then proceed to break out a series of shavers, trimmers and razors all with a specific purpose usually dictated by geographic region of anatomy.

Zitman and I left for a few minutes to attend to some errands only to return to find Buddy buck naked, lathered up head to toe, beginning his regime of trimming and shaving, all the while singing the Club Med theme song in as joyous a tone as one could imagine (you may note in the photo above that trimming was halted below the clavicle for that particular session).

Up until that point in our lives, the activity of bodily grooming was reserved for females.

As was almost always the case with Buddy, he never failed to surprise with new horizons.  He was a pioneer. One giant, extremely smooth pioneer.