No one much liked Klaus Gort.
People — mainly ladies — tried, but they just couldn’t.
He was a mixed up fellow, a victim of circumstance kept on the outer rim of society by the impenetrable cultural barrier it would take years in the United States to scale.
He’d walk into any bar in Squawhammer, Alabama, and at least three lonely, straight women would look over their shoulder and squeal with delight, hoping the beefy, talcum powder-toned ox would sidle into a chair next to them so they could waste away the evening complaining about the dearth of available men with their new gay buddy. The problem was, ol’ Gort was not gay. Was it wrong for these women to assume Klaus was a homosexual? Of course not. The only other men who wore skirts in Squawhammer were the local clan of self-proclaimed Scotsmen — of which, only one had red hair and could boast more than an eighth Scottish blood — whose short, plaid kilts could be identified from miles away by the abhorrent combinations of plaid. Not to mention the hair on their legs was so thick, they all looked like they were wearing bear pelt leggings under their checkered skirts. Klaus did not wear a kilt. He wore legitimate skirts sporting patterns that would cause the ’70s to blush. His legs were also so smooth and hairless they radiated moonlight after dark, but that was a by-product of his Latvian heritage, not choice. Needless to say, the odds that a woman might assume Klaus Gort was straight upon first glance was worse than a mouse’s chance against a .600 millimeter round fired at point-blank range from an elephant gun.
Klaus’ fatal flaw was his over enthusiastic ego, which never benefited from the initial doting the victim-to-be slathered him with upon introduction. His chest would swell and he would reply, “Well, sank yoo bery myuch,” when she commented on the fact that he was one of the few men in Alabama whose pectoral muscles protruded further than his gut. Sometimes, he would even reach out and help himself to a handful of her breast after she poked his, which was fine with them since he was gay and all.
The woman brave enough to wave him over might start to get suspicious of his heterosexuality when he told stories of Zerba, Veirhausa, and Fran, his wives still in Latvia — waiting by their meager firesides with their seventeen-year-old, blind snow ferrets curled up in their laps, standing eagerly at their mailboxes every afternoon for the hefty American checks he promised to send back once he started making money, but never did — but would squelch the idea once she re-realized that he was, in fact, wearing a skirt. But as the evening progressed and more alcohol seeped into Klaus’ already half-retarded brain, he would make a pass on the unsuspecting female, causing her to dodge his chapped, plastic-y lips as they careened towards her’s like a pair of dim-witted cows racing towards the only patch of green left in a two-acre pasture. Without fail, he’d end up the floor, face down in the perpetual thin film of boot dirt and manure.
Q: But why skirts? Why would a straight man, trying as hard as he could to walk away with his first helping from the endless buffet of American tail, wear female clothing to attract females?
A: On the airplane ride to America from Latvia, NBC streamed from the satellite box onto the modest personal television screens instead of the scheduled cheesy romance. At one point, Dateline began and half-way through ran a story on modern lesbianism in the United States. Spicy scenes of Samantha Ronson and Lindsay Lohan smooching on the beaches of Hawaii, and Ellen DeGeneres wrapping her albino arms around Portia de Rossi, danced across the screen. That was all it took. Upon landing, Klaus immediately made his way to the closest department store and bought all the feminine attire he could with the meager sixty-three dollars in his wallet.
