Orna Mulcahy on people we all know
Ray and Paul are in a state of high excitement over the delivery of their new egg-shaped Boffi bath which has to be winched into the back of the house by crane and the room virtually rebuilt around it. Such a fuss, and such a lot of able-bodied men needed to get it into position!
Ray's an architect and Paul's in event management, and they're always redecorating their Portobello redbrick; that is when they're not obsessively folding and sorting their white bicep-defining T-shirts and Calvin Klein undies or booking holidays on the Internet. Much easier to get away since Gordon the highland terrier died last year. Just now, they're contemplating a few days in Fez, where they met that gorgeous boy Santos last year. Wizards on the net, they could open a travel agency themselves, so many people call them up for recommendations, and what they don't know about boutique hotels isn't worth knowing.
Hetero friends who have them over to dinner - it makes the host and hostess look so liberal and interesting - feel they have to get Mini Maids in beforehand because Ray and Paul are used to pristine surroundings where everything seems to come in pairs - bay trees, candlesticks, perfect white vessels, i-Macs. If one gets broken, the other has to go. Threesomes are fine though. The trick to a good relationship, they've found, is a bit of diversity, and the only shame about Fez is that Carlos can't come as he's having a spot of visa bother, being Cuban. But never mind, they'll make it up to him later.
Carlos is one of the crowd of boys who Paul and Ray have sort of adopted, for want of a better word, though it's really just that they have this very nice house that people gravitate towards late in the evening, especially since they put in the media room with Bang and Olufsen surround sound, though Ray insists that Paul wears headphones if he wants to listen to that appalling Ibiza beat. Ray loves cooking and could teach Jamie Oliver a trick or two. Even their nibbles are expensive and delicious. Where else would you get heaps of shelled pistachios and Earl Grey-flavoured chocolate discs for God's sake?
The remarkable thing about Ray and Paul is how well they look, and hetero friends find this very irritating. With all they get up to, they should look at least 100. But no, Ray and Paul are always fresh-faced and smelling of some delicious cologne, thanks to their strict Kiehls routine and the liberal use of glistening eyedrops. It's not fair, but obviously they don't have all the worry of children, and can spend their whole time shopping, playing bingo at the George and eating brunch. A rather sad life really, say the bitter bunch in the burbs, though they'll still want to hear all the gory details from Fez.