This weekend, I had a revelation at the Tivoli. In High Fidelity, John Cusack’s character runs a record store and owns a ridiculously large collection of records. He immerses himself in the records, reorganizing them alphabetically and then chronologically. “Pretty pathetic,” I thought, “that someone could assign so much value and attachment to something inanimate.”
My smugness remained until I remembered my T-shirts. A T-shirt collection so vast that it is difficult for me to close my dresser drawers without corners of the shirts hanging out, like they’re trying to escape to a roomier location. I’ve spent countless hours sub-dividing the shirts into more efficient categories. I have T-shirts to work out in, T-shirts to sleep in, T-shirts that layer well under sweaters, T-shirts that look better with jeans and T-shirts that look better with khakis.
Don’t get me wrong, I am a little embarrassed about the fact that T-shirts satisfy nearly all my dressing needs. Going jogging? I have t-shirts for that. Going drinking? I have T-shirts for that too. It wouldn’t be unheard of for me to refuse invitations to events that require something a little dressier than my Bazooka Joe tee.
My friend proposed a bet that if she could go without make-up for a week, then I would have to go a week without wearing a T-shirt-or jeans and running shoes for that matter. Just the thought of it made me so dizzy I had to sit down and put my head between my knees until I regained equilibrium.
Luckily for me, I didn’t have to go through with the bet, because my friend welshed on her end of the bargain. It would have been difficult for me even to find seven outfits that didn’t involve a T-shirt, because they comprise 75 percent of my wardrobe. But the real trick of the bet would have been making myself wear real clothes everyday.
Apparently, though, some people do that all the time. They wear shirts that button up and have a collar. Shirts that are made of fabric like rayon and silk. Shirts that you have to iron.
Assuming I will actually land a job-a stretch in itself-it probably would behoove me to add some professional clothes to that one lonely blouse hanging in my closet, always looking sad and useless. But I hear that you have to shop for work clothes, which would necessarily require that I do three unpleasant things: make a trip to the mall, enter a dressing room and-the real kicker-spend money.
T-shirts, on the other hand, don’t necessitate any expenditure of effort. I don’t have to shop for them, and I don’t have to try them on. Usually, I don’t even have to pay for them.
I just accrue them like some people accrue stock options or credit-card debt. They come to me in a steady stream, as if I attract them with a sort of magnetic pull. My latest shirt? Last week, at the brewery, Ed McMahon came in and threw one into my hands.
These T-shirts represent all the things I’ve done and seen and scammed my way into in the last several years. One shirt is from volleyball camp in seventh grade. Another sports a giant black-and-white picture of Gilligan’s head. There are concert tees, basketball tees, high school and college tees-gray, green, navy, light blue, white. T-shirts that are dingy and frayed and T-shirts that are clean and fresh, still free from the soda or paint stains that will eventually befall them.
I don’t think a Talbot’s suit represents what I like and how I am in quite the same way. Somehow my personality got all tied up and intertwined into what I wear. Sports and bands, schools and television, all right there in a 100-percent cotton package. Even intangible aspects of my nature-easy-going, laid-back, sloppy. Nuances of my disposition made evident through the incessant T-shirt wearing.
Unfortunately, there are only four weeks left for me to indulge in this t-shirt fantasy. Maybe a future employer will humor me on my dress requirements. Maybe some philanthropist will set me up with a trust fund for turning my T-shirt-covered back on the world of ties and pantyhose.
Maybe I could get a job at a record store.
