Friday, July 09, 2004
Hot Shirt on a Silver Platter
He pulled on his new shirt with the childlike enthusiasm he once felt when he’d get a new notebook at the beginning of the school year. It was riotously colorful, a petrol puddle in polyester, draping his slight frame like a sack on a fencepost. Though he was generally disinclined towards self-examination, especially in the physical sense, he evaluated his new look in two different mirrors as he savored the feeling of the slick fabric on his bare skin, smoothing it unnecessarily with his hands. “This,” he thought to himself, “is a nice shirt. I look good in this shirt.”
He gathered together a basket of dirty laundry and carried it out toward the front of the apartment, where she was resting on the couch reading a thick magazine. She put it down with a gasp and a snort of laughter. “What is that?,” she inquired with mock horror.
“My new shirt,” he responded self-assuredly.
“Where’d it come from?”
“I got it from a street vendor. And before you say anyting else about it, I really like this shirt. It’s comfortable, I look hot in it, and it makes me happy.”
“So you’re happy? Good, then. Be happy. If that’s what it takes, then you should enjoy.”
“I will then.”
“Good.” And with that she returned to her reading and he stepped outside, went down to the laundry room with the basket of towels under his arm. At the entry to the laundry room he paused to hold the door open for great-auntie. She wasn’t anyone’s great auntie in particular; she was just the old woman of the building, an energetic, opinionated, benign matron of advanced maturity and questionable judgment. She stopped as she went past him, a small sack of warm dishcloths in her scrawny wattled arms.
“Oh Michael, thank you!,” she effused. “You’re well?”
“I’m great, Mrs. M. Just doing some laundry.”
“Well you go ahead, young man, you just go right ahead.” The buzzing overhead tubes shone their unnatural light down on them and he couldn’t help but notice the even less natural color of her hair with its wispsy grey roots over a crusted seborrheic scalp. Her moles cast shadows over the pits of her large-pored skin. Her makeup was thick; he idly wondered if it could be peeled back like old paint to reveal geologic strata of expired cosmetics. “Oh my,” she continued enthusiastically, casting an appraising and approving glance over his torso, “what a marvelous shirt! It’s like a party! I could wear a shirt like that myself! We would be twins - wouldn’t that be cute? Where did you get it? Was it expensive?”
“Umm.... it was a gift,” he mumbled, looking down toward his navel, trying to submerge himself in the colors. “I gotta get this stuff in.” He walked past her into the laundry room and loaded the machine, letting the door slam shut behind him unceremoniously.
When he got back to his apartment he went directly into the bedroom and pulled the shirt off, tossing it in the corner behind his nightstand and pulling on a maroon fleece sweatshirt. He picked up a chunky novel and walked up to the living room. “Give me some couch,” he asked.
She shifted her legs a little and he slid into the cushions opposite her. He thumbed through his book as she peered at him over her magazine. “Your fancy shirt?,” she asked.
“I’m getting rid of it,” he replied without looking up. “I don’t think it quite fit.”
