Here’s Looking at Me, Kid

I’ve been wearing the same outfit – a black short-sleeved HEMA^® tee-shirt and Levi’s – every day since April 2016. This is a fact. Please note the happy-go-lucky photo parked at the end of my every column. That photo was taken several years ago and I am wearing that tee-shirt or one of its cousins as I type this, and have done for 10 years. Yes, I look exactly the same today, clothing-wise. Otherwise I have become wizened and hunched. I have walked among you, an unrecognizable phantom slowly plying Coast Village Road with a knobby Black Walnut cane and sumptuous cape. 

“Who on Earth is that wizened older gentleman in a distastefully tight black tee-shirt?”

“It’s wrong to even wonder, Marge. Let’s quicken our pace.”

Yes, that’s me. My black tee-shirt will always give me away. I long ago decided to stop fussing with my wardrobe, wildly simplified my presentational persona.

Why would I do such a thing? You know why, but I’ll spell it out anyway; and in the painfully overwrought language you have come to expect. 

Inchoate? You Know it!

My wearing the same numbing outfit every day since April 2016 has freed my inchoate spirit to rise like the sweet, unfettered songbird which, escaping its gilded prison, ascends ecstatically to touch the vault of heaven. Yeah, and I’ve been doing this “flapping jailbird” thing with bargain tees sold three to a pack. The decade-old decision has borne fruit – some of it figuratively hurled at me as by an angry mob of villagers pelting an intruder with bolts in his neck. That is, We Who Wear the Same Thing Every Day are made to live on the fringes of polite society. But hear me: I am no monster. I am the Man of Tomorrow; at this writing, The Man of Tuesday or Maybe Wednesday. 

Look in my closet and you’ll see a metaphorical Batman walk-in with 50 pairs of grey tights, 50 dark blue cowls, 50 pairs of gloves, 50 satiny capes; a superhero’s uniform in …uh …fiftiplicate. Riddle me this: does The Batman (to use the old school Batman definite article) have to choose what to wear when heading out into midnight Gotham to do battle with the forces of darkness? No. Time is of the essence, and there must be no dallying over which cowl to choose. 

“Paisley or Matelassé Robin? Be quick! Gotham’s citizens await!”

“Holy Toile, The Batman!” (slams velveteen-gloved fist into velveteen-gloved palm) “My mind is a-twitter!”

“Never..use..the definite article when addressing me..Boy Wonder. We’ve talked about this!” 

Devastating. But swell news for Gotham’s crooks, invariably dressed in b/w Breton stripes and flat cap––there you see?! Listen to me! The obsession with ensemble is paralyzing!

My own unchanging uniform gifts me something of The Batman’s JE NE SAIS QUOI – makes me inscrutable, dense with possibility. Yes, in the expressions of those obliged to interact with me, I often see confusion and pity. “Aw, this poor dissolving lump can’t work with buttons.” I’ve chosen not to. Litheness of spirit and dress had long been my goal. 

49 Slack-Jawed Idiots

But you know what? While we’re talking about it and I find myself deflecting your mocking inferences, will I defend myself? Yes I said yes I will Yes! I spent too many years fidgeting with “buttons,” pushing them with clumsy, hurried difficulty every morning through “button holes.” For what? To hold my shirt closed? Let my example be your liberation! Friend, we’ve suffered long enough! And “Holes?” Ha! They are machined slots limned with close-stitching, and they are diabolical!

“Oh, man! I gotta get to work, but first I gotta gingerly push these 50 little discs through 50 tiny, machine-stitched slots down the front of my stupid shirt, just to close it.” Let me speak here for all of us, reader. Let my voice amplify your long buried hue and cry! How fabulously ridiculous is this “buttoning the shirt” business? Oh! And does this next scenario sound dishearteningly familiar?

You get to work, shirt tails hanging unevenly because you got one button wrong and the other 49 followed like slack-jawed idiots. Co-workers in the kitchenette place hands over mouths to hide their cruel snickering, and Carl from Sales (it’s always the guys from Sales!) takes it on himself to sneak the dangling tail of your Van Heusen Performance All-Way Stretch Dot Print Long Sleeve into the waffle iron. Say, what’s that smell? It’s your smoldering Van Heusen Performance All-Way Stretch Dot Print Long Sleeve, that’s what! 

You make for Carl and find yourself careering around the kitchenette with an Elite Ceramic Nonstick 2-Square Belgian Waffle Maker swinging from your charred shirt-tail like a smoking censer! Sound familiar?! “This lopsided button-sack and these ghastly pleated trousers have got to go!” your inner child screams for the umpteenth time. I know, friend. I know.

And these humiliations were ever preceded by the spirit-breaking ritual in the quietude of my bedroom; my blearily trying to decide which of my crummy button-down shirts to spend a laborious 40-50 minutes joining down the middle. Oh, sure – something I always looked forward to. Every morning 40-50 frustrated minutes blasted into eternity. Oh, not everybody takes 50 minutes to button a shirt? Oh, uh huh. Allow me to snort with derision.

Peace Like a Tee-Shirt

In my omnipresent black tee and jeans I am at peace. I could be one of Manhattan’s swaggering Abstract Expressionists back in the Day – Pollock, de Kooning, Rothko. I am a living symbol, a notion, a mercurial mystery man with a shrouded past and occasionally sore shoulder. My name is Jeff, and I wear the exact same outfit every day.

“Hello, Jeff.”