GET ME GUCCI!!!

I'm having a blast working at the modeling agency, I just wish that I hadn't went and got myself a small cold. I'm old enough to know my body, but I still don't listen to it as much as I should. I came home from work yesterday around 6pm. That was early for me, considering we've been putting in 13 hour days. I was feeling a little bit under the weather all day, we had SO many fires to put out yesterday, but out of all them I was most stressed out about the task that I was made to do. You can call it my Queer Eye curse, my whole gay life has been about women thinking that I can do things that all faggots should be able to do! Like I should know how to sew, or cook, or do hair. I can't, I'm not that gay. I also HATE to go shopping, it's true, I'm a power shopper. Get in and get out, don't try anything on because that takes to much time. So for some reason my boss( who's fucking fierce!!) decided to trust me with getting her dress for the show, you know the one that she's going to wear on the red carpet.
"Jose!! Call Prada, Gucci and whoever and tell them that I need a dress!! And HURRY!"
" Okay!, (trying to sound capable and secure) Which one? What color? "
"Jose, YOU'RE GAAAAYY, you decide"
End of conversation, and the way she rhymed Jose with gay, she made both the AY sounds long and shrill. Jose is Gay, I haven't heard that since elementary school, and even then it was because I looked up the word gay in the dictionary and it meant happy, so I, wanting a bigger vocabulary than everyone else adopted the word and started using it.
"Jose, you wanna come to house and have nieve?" My boyhood friend would ask.
" I would love to come over and have some ice cream, it makes me GAY!" I would exclaim with such vigor and youthfulness.
Little did I know that ice cream does not make you gay, it makes you happy and fat, but not gay. Sucking dick makes you gay, and that wouldn't come into my life for another seven years, so I became Jose is GAAAY. Not because I liked boys, but because ice cream made me gay. I was asked by the teacher why I was telling everyone I was gay and I had to tell him that it meant happy.
"Jose I KNOW what gay means, but also means something else...." Long pause as I looked up at him with tears welling up in my eyes( I always hated when men taller than my dad talked to me, and Mr. Rendon was waaaay taller than my dad).
"What?.....What else does it mean Mr. Rendon?" I had asked meekly,I was scared that I was in trouble, what was the big deal. I can't be happy? Was it a crime to be gay in 1986? Apparently it was, because he got all red in the face and then took a long look at me. I mean a loooong hard, trying to figure me out look. The one where you look at those magic picture where you have to squint, get you're eyes out of focus and then sneeze to see the pansy in the garden. That's how he saw me, the boy with the matching two piece burgundy sweat suit, the top had a hood with no sleeves, very 80's, very now. And the shorts matched, but I had started to outgrow them and my legs were a little too long for them by then, but I insisted on wearing them together because they were a set and I didn't want them to be apart. My hair was styled with so much AquaNet and DEP gel that it was harder than cement, I had to have to highest waterfall like bangs in the world, even then I knew that my hair was an asset. I was wearing some sneakers that I think we got at the swapmeet, but I kept them nice and clean. The deal breaker, the one that made my picture jump out at him, was when he got to my shoes he noticed that I wearing what my little brother so now affectionately calls Bitty socks, you know ankle socks. I didn't want to wear long tube socks they look out of place, so I got a pair of my sisters socks, the kind she wears with shorts. Only hers had the little trimming around the sock in pastel colors, pink, yellow, baby blue, lavender. I chose the most masculine color she had available that would match with my outfit, LAVENDER. It even had the little pom pom on the end of the sock, that hangs over the back of the shoe. After that stare that seemed like a life time, but really was only a nanosecond, I shifted my weight, put one hand on my hip and brought the other one over my eyes so I could look up at Mr. Rendon and not get blinded by the sun. There on the black top, on the Four Square painted lines, Mr. Rendon figured out that I was a gay. Not ice cream happy, but dick happy. He told me to stop calling myself gay and he left it at that. I let it slip away and never thought about that moment until much later in my adolescence when Jose is GAAAY became an accusation and insult.
So I sat at my desk completely stunned, who do I call? I've never done this before, she'll fire me. Five minutes go by before she calls me on the phone to ask if I've found her a dress, or if I have any ideas. When I tell her that I don't she yells at me to bring her that latest Vogue, I go and find it. It's September 2005 and it's HUGE, a fashion issue with Sarah Jessica Parker on the cover. I notice that if this gets thrown at me it's going to hurt. She grabs it from me and starts looking through it like she's looking for a spell or incantation to ward off evil spirits.
"Look Josssaaay, she her? I want something cute, small, I want to show off my legs!"
"I was thinking a nice black pant suit? Very strong and sexy at the..."
"PANTS! Hell no! Josssaaaay, I've got great legs let me show them off while I still got them!"
She hands me the book, thankfully, and my job now is to scour the magazine until I find her the dress. Why me? I suck at this, I flip page after page. Damn these current fashions! Twenty minutes go by.
"Jossssaaay, where are we with that dress?" She beckons from inside her office.
"I've tabbed the pages with possibilities, maybe Valentino, or Prada or..."
"NO, I want to be sexy, all of these are shit. Keep looking, make me look good Jose."
"Okay!" I said though I had no idea how I was going to do this, all the other assistants were off shuttling the young models from shoots and castings and I was left alone. I'm on the internet trying to look at websites when she comes out of her office to look at the Vogue once more. I opened it for her to a page that I hadn't gotten to and there was this beautiful silk navy blue long sleeved dress that this actress was wearing on page 541. It had a nice plunging kneck line and it was perfect for her.
"YES! That's it, I love it! Where can we get?" And by we, she means me. I quickly scan the page and look for a name, anything, what is it? YSL? Dolce and Gabbana? WHAT! I notice then the caption while she's looking at the other magazines, it's....GUCCI!
"It's Gucci, the dress is Gucci." I tell her this thinking like a poor Mexican boy would, like it's a dream dress and it's only found in magazines, not in your closet. I sounded like I let her down, you know liked I failed. She looked over at me with this nonchalant look and said.
"SO? I love Gucci, Get me GUCCI!"
"But the dress is $1,000!"
"Jose, the dress is me, Gucci is me, I need this dress. Call them and tell them that I need this dress."
Well I guess she told me, so I started my search which would last the rest of the day. The Gucci boutiques in NYC did not buy the dress Niemen Marcus did, but there are no NM in NYC. When I tell her this she doesn't care about the cost have them send it to us. I call around all afternoon and no one can find the dress that's on page 541 of the latest Vogue, she even went home early yesterday and called my cell phone while I was home to ask about the dress. I've been on the phone with so many different store and personal shoppers that today I was scared to tell her that I didn't have a dress. Thank God my friend who got me the gig was at the office today when she called. He's her real assistant and I'm just filling in for the time being, he got on the phone and told her that everything was going to be alright and that the boutique would have something similar to that and to go shopping on Sunday. She was happy after that, I was pissed, but she was happy. I still can't believe all the pressure that put myself under and the problem that I thought we had wasn't that big after all. I ended up coming home early and just resting in bed the remainder of the afternoon. I'm all high on drugs for this cold and can't wait to fall asleep, I just had to write this. If you guys get a chance, page 541 on the new Vogue, had a kick ass dress that you can't get anywhere in the U.S. night....df