All this
talk about shirts has had me wondering about my own sartorial choices. I very rarely wear shirts with collars these days, but I do have a uniform of sorts. Almost every day, whatever the weather, I wear a T-shirt, a V-neck sweater, and whichever pants I can squeeze into at the mome. The perennial nature of the outfit is explained by my temperature-controlled office and our naturally cool apartment. I commute between one and the other in an air-conditioned
vanpool, and I rarely go anywhere other than office or home, except perhaps an air-conditioned movie theater, a freezing cold store, or some other artificial biosphere. Accordingly, I don’t have to worry too much about adjusting my clothing to suit the weather. So, I suit myself.
I occasionally stray and wear a sweatshirt or a polo-sweater (I can’t remember what this is called in England—it’s the kind of
jumper with a shirt collar), but this is a rare exception. Either way, I pretty much always wear a T-shirt, and even though it's almost always covered up, I usually wear a T-shirt with something written on it. I feel guilty about this, not in the sense of “
middle-class guilt” (not being middle-class I am completely and utterly immune from such emotions), but rather because I know with absolute certainty that T-shirts with things written on them are hopelessly naff. I’ve always known this, but I just can’t resist. I’m powerless over T-shirts with shit on the front (and/or back). (When I was at university, my roommate used to rag me relentlessly about the slogan shirts I always wore. One day when we were staying in dorms in an American college, she locked herself out of her room after she’d showered. I forced her to choose between greeting the RA who could open her door in one of my besloganned T-shirts or a towel. As I recall, she chose the towel.)
For years I wore political shirts. Womyn’s this, lesbian that, radical this, progressive that. That’s pretty much in the past, now, but I’m still a sucker for a souvenir shirt. Every year I spring for the Pride shirt of my company’s lesbian and gay employees’ group. I don’t march with them at Pride—I don’t even wear the shirt at Pride—but I
can’t resist making a purchase. It’s usually a hideous mishmash of company logos, rainbows, and pink triangles, but I still buy one, sometimes two.
Today was one of the days I chose not to wear a V-neck, and because I was wearing a zipper hoodie (I have no idea what that is in England, so screw yez) my T-shirt was visible. It was one of my rather extensive collection of
Kukuxumusu shirts featuring bull testicles—not
just bull testicles, you understand, but since testicles are an integral part of a bull, where there’s a bull there are bull testicles.
So, I present to you the You Say Tomato version of Troubled Diva’s “Shirt off My Back Project”:
The Bull’s Testicles Project. Using the Comments feature, guess when I’ll run out of shirts featuring bull’s balls, and you’ll win … one of those bloody company Pride shirts I keep buying every year. Collectors’ items, they are. (Note: This is a real contest. Please make your guess by midnight--Pacific Time--Thursday, Oct. 17.)
Being the shy, retiring type, I’m not going to actually model the shirts, but I’ll present an image of the shirt I wore that day. You can trust me.
