A Very Affected Gentleman. Part II

At parties he 'dresses to stand apart not to be noticed', and he always brings a bottle of something nice. He even brought one to last years Easter Egg Hunt because 'all kids should see examples of the way things ought to be done'.

His dress is that trendy timelessness that many find appealing, but with a decided emphasis on the trendiness over the timelessness. He'll admonish someone about the way they tied their ascot as though he were Edward VII at Cowes. He only wears New Balance and think Nikes are for children and delinquents, and he prays he is unnoticed buying New Balance colabs at Undefeated.

In conversation, he's a master at repeating something someone else has just said as though it were his own original thought. Usually people are too intoxicated to notice the obviousness of the theft and the person insulted is always far too polite to say anything. He counts on that last bit.

He is always generously complimentary about the food, and peppers his conversations with references to the fine restaurants someone always has to remind him he was at the night before. However, fostering a fashionable sense of democratic values he professes the same fondness for street food as haute cuisine. 'Is there really a difference?' he was once heard to say to what he imagined was a roomful of scandalized gasps.

He's quick to set up a poker knight, but when you ask if he might not prefer a rubber of bridge he sucks his cocktail between his teeth and makes a seemingly biting comment about your age.

Socially, he's predominantly working class, however, he will never correct you if you mistake his origins as slightly or even substantially more patrician. He knows enough to pass. Emerging from nowhere higher than a court jester he will make vague references to a supposed connection to some ancient family in the distance past. If someone mentions Burke's he says something sarcastic and self consciously counter-culture to an actual room of scandalized gasps.

His taste in music is rather tricky. In public, he is broadly appreciative of everything Pitchfork says he  should be, however, in private he secretly nurtures a belief that Pink Floyd is truly where music began and where it ended.

He thinks a morning suit is something for Europeans and cross dressers, however, he luxuriates in long reddit discussions of the finest London tailors. Some of them he's even been to.

He's confident enough to say he can probably vote for Trump, but in actuality he has over $150,000 in student loans and has already secretly given to Bernie Sanders, but really, does one actually talk about politics these days? He likes to give the impression that he's above politics like some ancient European aristocrat, but in actuality he spends at least an hour a day on Politico and the Huffington Post, again lamenting that no one takes him seriously as a man of thinking and discernment.

And when on holiday, well, one better not just yet.